6 Castle Howard: Part II

 Oh, welcome back to Part II of the tour of my house!

Ahem.  Part I is seen here.

This is the Garden Room.  I love every bit of it, other than the whole 'not-actually-my-house' part.

 Yep. Castle Howard has its own winter china. No, the gift shop didn't have any for purchase.

sad.

 The Crimson Dining Room.

 The Turquoise Drawing Room.  The color is almost overwhelming, especially in these pictures- but with the high ceilings and large windows it's actually not as bad when you're present in the room.  I kind of liked it. 

 Portrait of Lady Mary Howard, the youngest daughter of the 6th Earl, painted in 1828 by John Jackson, a local artist.

 17th century inlaid Italian cabinet. 

 The Long Gallery. Paul wants this room.

I wouldn't complain.

 The Octagon, the center of the entire Long Gallery.  When Queen Victoria visited in 1850 a dining table was custom-made for this room. Afterwards, a party was held, and the table was dismantled and thrown out the window to clear the room. 

 I really, really want a cabinet like this for my large prints and maps.  

 The North end of the Long Gallery.

 The rear of the house. The entry point for visitors is to the right of the image.

 Entrance to Ray Wood.

 The Temple of the Four Winds.

 Bridge to the Mausoleum, which wasn't available for visitors.

Last view of my future house...

Gorgeous.

5 Castle Howard: Part 1

  We finally got to Castle Howard.

I've wanted to go there since we moved here, and it's only an hour away- so I'm not sure why it took us so long to go.  Really more of a large stately home than a castle, the 18th century Baroque mansion is widely considered one of the most beautiful in all of England.

Now, I'll warn you, I'm not happy with my images.  I'm posting them for you to see, but I think we'll have to go back so I can take more. (oops!)
Some of you may recognize the house as its alter-ego, Brideshead.  Both the 1981 miniseries and the 2008 motion picture were filmed here.

This was the carriage house- now it's a gift shop and farm shop!

 Statue in the gardens.

 The top of a pillar in the garden- I just found the pose entertaining. 

 The house! 

 We could have walked up another path to the front of the house, but walking down through the grounds to the front of the house was just so perfect!

  The Atlas Fountain is an iconic part of Castle Howard's image.  It was added to the house in the 1850s, and later provided the setting for a pivotal scene in Brideshead Revisited. 

 You actually enter the house from the back, so we went around.

 The view from the back of the home.

Not so bad...

 Paul was quite taken with the ceiling skylight over the entry stairs.

The China Room is at the top of the stairs, and is the first room we saw.

 I about died over the china chests- if only stuff was still shipped that way!

 The whole wall was a china cabinet, but I only took a picture of this pattern.

Sorry. 

 Like I said, I found the chests far more interesting!

 A flushing chamber pot! Water stored in the bottom flushed out the bowl, similar to an airplane toilet. 

 I have a chair problem. My auction purchases will attest to this.

I love these chairs, and now want to paint some of mine!

 Combination firescreen/writing desk!

 Oh, the chairs... the chairs!

 The Antiquities Passage displays the treasures collected by the 4th Earl, Henry Howard, during his 1738-39 travels in Italy.

 The sun beaming through the windows made this hard to photograph, but remnants of mosaic floors were turned into tabletops. Gorgeous!

 Paul and I decided a corridor full of antiquities wouldn't be so bad... 

 Oh, hello, George... odd seeing you here.

 Castle Howard's central dome is one of the most identifiable parts of the house, from the inside and out.  A massive fire in 1940 destroyed the East wing and collapsed the dome, which was rebuilt twenty years later.

 The fresco was repainted based on careful studies of photographs of the original dome, as no sketches or plans remained.

The Atlas Fountain through the front door of the house.

I just wish a 32-year-old Jeremy Irons would walk through the door... 

oh, did I daydream there?

Check out Part II for the rest of the house!

0 Boxing Day

If you're someone who still has a paper calendar you might notice today is listed as 

Boxing Day.

No, this isn't a day in celebration of Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali.

Rather, Boxing Day stems from a history of aristocracy and servitude. 

Because the upper class needed their servants to work on Christmas day (to serve Christmas dinner, amongst other tasks), the servants traditionally got their holiday a day later- December 26.

The "box" part is believed to describe the gifts, hand-me-down clothes (if you got new ones for Christmas, you pass the old ones to your maid!), and leftover food packaged up and given to the servants by their employers.

Today, Boxing Day means something more universal:  SALES!

And a bank holiday (means national holiday).

I wonder if today's sales staff gets a different day off in lieu of Boxing Day... 

I've opted out of the hustle and bustle, despite having some errands due.

I've spent the day in a much more enjoyable way.

I made homemade Belgian waffles for breakfast

and I've been editing Budapest photographs whilst watching 

Downton Abbey.

A period drama set in the 1910s, the show explores the life of both the family and staff at a Yorkshire estate.   

That's right... Yorkshire.  Although it's filmed in Hampshire- boo.

Most of the actors are from Yorkshire as well- 

and Mr. Carson, the butler, is played by Harrogate's own Jim Carter.

Yay!

0 Alnwick Castle

Alnwick Castle, (pronounce "Ann-ick") is the home of the Duke of Northumberland and his family, the Percys.  The current castle's earliest existing sections emerged in the early 1300s, although a fortified building had existed on this site for over 200 years already. Some of you may recognize the castle from its most recent incarnation, as Hogwarts, Harry Potter's school.  Although not a fan myself, I found the many small Harrys that ran around the grounds on the day of our visit quite entertaining.  While I do have the guide book for the castle, it mostly describes the amazing furnishings and art collected by the Percys over their 1000 years in England (the family was "founded" by a member of William the Conqueror's Norman Conquest).  I couldn't take pictures inside the castle, but its grounds are no less amazing.  Keep in mind, this is a house- the second largest inhabited castle in England after Windsor Castle. 

State coach from 1825.  Originally a royal coach, it now displays the Percy livery.  Wait, your family doesn't have a livery??

Some of the grounds.  Not even the garden, which we'll get to.

This was on the wall... Cause they've got the original digital picture frame.  Live action "picture window".

The fountains at the entrance to the gardens. The little John Deere big wheels appear to live here.

Hmmm.... not bad.  (This is the hedge to the left of the fountain above.  There's a similar one to the right.)

Some close-ups of some of the beautiful flowers in the garden.

The doves (?) live in the gardens.  I followed them for a bit, as I've never seen living shuttlecocks. 

Kind of put those waddling geese from Aristocats to shame, don't they??

In case you didn't notice in the earlier images, the castle roofline is dotted with these stone figures.  They are medieval and all different.  This one I found particularly interesting.