Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2023 - January 2024 i Discover Britain

With its mountains, lakes, and undulating emerald-green hills, the Lake District, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and England’s biggest national park, in the northwest county of Cumbria, has been enchanting visitors for centuries. Here are some of the quaintest, most picturesque villages that you can visit in this most inspiring of landscapes. The village of Grasmere, set in a pretty vale just north of its namesake lake, is crowned by magnificent fells and mountains and surrounded by scattered hamlets and farmsteads. The area was once a major draw for artists, writers, and painters. Poet William Wordsworth described the vale of Grasmere and Rydal as “the loveliest spot that man hath ever found”, and both John Constable and JMW Turner, two of Britain’s most famous painters, captured the area’s unique light…

The dialect used in the old counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, and the Furness district of Lancashire, which today form much of Cumbria, is the product of many influences over the centuries. The oldest surviving words are Cumbric – similar to Celtic – and include words such as britches (trousers), brat (coarse apron), clout (cloth), darn (to mend), and place names such as Torpenhow, which is made up of three words meaning hill: tor, pen and how. The best-known of the Celtic words to survive are the sheep-scoring numerals, which only consist of the numbers one to 20 (a score). The flock on a farm would total so-many score. Herdwick flocks are hefted to the land on which they were born and remain with the farm even when the property…

If you’re an Agatha Christie fan, you’ll know all about her love affair with property. The crime-fiction author was a compulsive homebuyer, snapping up flats and mews houses in London, cottages in the countryside and maintaining the upkeep of Ashfield, her beloved Torquay childhood home. Today, Greenway in Devon is her most famous house – a handsome Georgian mansion sitting high above the River Dart – and it draws thousands of visitors each year. But the home she spent most of her life in flies well under the radar, as does the town it sits within, but for little good reason. Wallingford is a delightful, quintessential English market town and should not be missed on any Christie tour of Britain. Christie described Wallingford, a town on the River Thames in…

Located just a few miles south of Kendal, the fine family seat of Levens Hall stands on the edge of the Lake District and is one of the most underrated stately homes in England. Though today it is a picture of respectability and a mansion worthy of a period drama, this has not always been the case. Levens Hall evolved into a beacon of Elizabethan elegance from more humble 13th-century origins as a pele tower, built by the de Redman family. Pele towers were defensive stone structures, usually three storeys high with walls of up to 10 feet-thick that were built to protect families and their livestock from the regular raids and sieges caused by the ongoing Wars of Scottish Independence, and so were pretty much unique to the north…

Its red-brick facade is known to fans of Regency-era romance series Bridgerton as the Grosvenor Square home of the Netflix TV hit’s titular family. Off-screen, however, Ranger’s House lies across the River Thames in southeast London, nestled between the leafy neighbourhoods of Greenwich Park and Blackheath. Visitors to the Georgian villa, cared for by English Heritage, won’t find the eye-catching wisteria that adorns the Bridgertons’ abode. Even the front door receives a makeover for the cameras, turning from dark grey to green with a lion swapped for a golden knocker. But there is still plenty of overlap between fact and fiction. Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, portrayed in Bridgerton and the spin-off Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, was sister-in-law to Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick, who lived at Ranger’s House,…

The wheelwright’s craft is among the oldest known to man, with the wheel being one of humanity’s most comprehensive creations. A wheelwright is a craftsman who builds or repairs wooden wheels for carts and wagons, while ‘wright’ means ‘a worker or shaper of wood.’ The origins of the wheel dates back to prehistoric times, with the earliest examples traced back over 5,000 years. Spoked wheels evolved in Asia Minor by 2000 BC, and a complete Bronze Age wheel was recently discovered by archaeologists in Peterborough, thought to date from 1100-800 BC. Records found at Vindolanda, a Roman fort and settlement near Hadrian’s Wall, showed that trading in wheel parts occurred during the Roman era. Wheels were a great invention that facilitated sledges to be turned into carts, eventually being carried…

Merewood Country House Hotel & Restaurant, Windermere Dating back to 1812, this elegant country house hotel on Lake Windermere is brimming with historic charm, and retains many of its original features, including the panelled hall and reception. With 20 bedrooms, guests can choose from four tiers of sumptuous accommodation: ultimate lake view, lake view, four-poster lake view, or classic rooms – each one stylishly designed with relaxation in mind. Merewood has two on-site restaurants, both of which produce food using ingredients sourced from the hotel’s own land, or hand-picked from local suppliers. The award-winning Arboreal serves up a seven-course taster menu featuring modern, elegant dishes that’ll delight fine-dining fans, while The Grill offers a more relaxed setting for comforting British classics such as, (of course), Cumberland sausage and mash. Afternoon…

DISCOVER CUMBRIA – QUIRKY TRADITIONS In May 2023, hundreds of millions of people worldwide tuned in to see the coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey. But how many royal watchers know that far from Westminster, in distant Cumbria, there’s a British island with its very own king? For the past 170 or so years, the 50-acre Isle of Piel has appointed its own monarch. On the tip of the Furness peninsula, the little windswept island lies half a mile from the Cumbrian mainland, on the edge of Morecambe Bay. The incumbent of Piel’s throne is submarine electrician, Aaron Sanderson, who in 2022 fought off more than 200 other candidates to become Piel’s King, and the landlord of its pub. The origins of Piel’s ‘royal’ tradition are shrouded in…

Crossword no 237 Solutions in next issue Across 1Tyneside industrialist raised to the peerage in 1887 who had his rural retreat at Cragside near Rothbury (9)9 Historic market town in Surrey, at the foot of the North Downs (7)10 One of Shakespeare’s tragedies (7)11 Resort and fishing port at the mouth of the River Deveron in northeast Scotland (5)12 Queen in Camelot (9)13 Edmund _______, Elizabethan poet who wrote The Faerie Queene (7)15 Jousting weapon (5)17 Fencing weapon (5)18 The Tale of Benjamin _______ (Beatrix Potter story) (5)19 A bird such as the avocet or oystercatcher (5)20 _______ Mote, medieval moated manor house near Sevenoaks in Kent (7)23 Derbyshire town known as ‘the gateway to the Peaks’ (9)25 Mendicant preacher (5)27 In the distant past (4,3)28 Arthur _______, author who…