Our home for the next two weeks is a place called Kiplin Hall. Built by the Lord Baltimore family in the 1600s, it has been drastically altered, expanded, demolished, etc since. We were staying in the coach house which had been converted into dorms for the University of Maryland. The grounds were enormous and contained a man-made lake built in the last 20 years to cover the quarry that they created in order to get funding to save the building. You never would have known that it was man-made unless someone told you because it was pristine and filled with wildlife. After we all arrived, we took a lovely stroll around the grounds as our introduction to the place.
The next day we all woke up at our leisure and our professor took us through Kiplin Hall and gave us the historical background of the manor. The restoration effort on the main house was spectacular, however, some misguided architect told the trust in the 1970s that the later additions were not as important and they should be torn down so about half of the estate is missing. Not to mention the vast amounts of land that have had to be sold since the family lost their fortune. At one point they owned about 600 acres, and now they only own about 40.
Our first official day of class we went to Easby Abbey outside of Richmond. Being our first official site we were all wowed by the ruins of the once vast monastery. The grounds are now used by the locals as a park with people running all over the ruins, which was startling for us. We as historians are so used to the "don't touch or you will ruin it" philosophy of America. After our tour we walked across some fields to the city of Richmond which has a tremendous castle ruin with a square keep. The walk was great as we got to see many bunnies (which amused the guide since they see them as vermin) and some Scottish cattle; that is until we got to this hill that must have been a 25% grade. Most of us were still feeling some jetlag, but the worst part is that we are grad students so for the most part we are out of shape as well. When we got to dinner, which was fish and chips, we inhaled the giant pieces.
The next day was quite an adventure. We drove up to the Moors which meant I got my first experience driving in England. It was pretty intense if I do say so myself. The driving on the wrong side of the road was nothing, it was the crazy switchbacks and narrow roads with oncoming traffic that was scary. We drove to the tallest pub in England, the Tan Hill. The door had a sign about keeping it closed to not let in the sheep which we thought was a joke, but we soon found out was not. The sheep were cold from the wind and did everything possible to get inside.
Tuesday we went to the town of North Allerton to meet with the County Archives. This will be the only time I bore you with the details of an archive because we saw several and if you have seen one archive you have really seen them all. They discussed the problems they have with storage, digital data transfer and funding. They took us to see their digitization office with the giant digital camera, which was pretty neat to see how it was done. Then they showed us their mobile shelving. It was a non-stop roller coaster of fun, we could hardly contain our excitement. After we were allowed to roam the town for a bit before we went to the Central Archaeology office. The town was one of many market towns we would see with small shops crowded together and a central area that was used for stalls on certain days. The Central Archaeology office was interesting to me, being the only archaeological trained person, because they discussed how GIS is used with archaeology.
Wednesday we went to Rievaulx Abbey, Rievaulx Terrace and a Starfish site. The abbey was giant and in far better shape than the first abbey because the British government had a program during the 1920s that went to certain sites and rebuilt them in a manner that no one could tell by simply looking at them. Up on the terrace, which had been built by the aristocratic family that owned the abbey and surrounding land in the 18th and 19th century, you could get a great view of the abbey and a nice walk between the two follies (fake Greek and Roman temples in this case, but can also be fake anything really.)After our guide took us to a field out in the middle of nowhere to this strange little building in a sheep field. It turns out it was a Starfish site which was a decoy created during WWII to fool the Germans into bombing areas of no importance instead of cities like Birmingham. The way it worked was the site was manned by a few men who watched the skies for German planes. When they saw planes on the radar or in the sky they would ignite tanks underground that made the area look like petroleum plants or other industrial sites. They dotted the entire English isle at one point, but only a few survive because there wasn't much to them above ground. I had to admit it was the strangest historical monument I had ever seen.
Thursday was our introduction to our projects day. Each of us was assigned a partner and given a project to do while in England. Mine, along with C, was to do a historical research report and assessment of the city of Leyburn, an old market town. It dated back to the Middle Ages and some of the buildings still survived from that area. We spent the day walking around town getting a feel for the architectural style and then went to the library to do research.
Friday we went to the Bowes Museum, which was built to look like a French chateau but was built specifically to be an art museum. We met with the curators to discuss issues of collection, storage, restoration, etc. They showed us their store rooms, conservation lab, and other behind the scenes places. The museum was trying to move away from the period room type of display (where they set up a room to look as if someone lived there during a certain era) and they showed us one of the rooms where they were making this change. I noticed a large mirror off by itself in the corner and realized that I must have found the Mirror of Erised! I couldn't make my way over to it though.
We were allowed some time to wander through the museum itself. It had lots of interesting pieces of work, but the best piece had to be the mechanical swan made of sterling silver. They operate it two times a day and we happened to be there when it was turned on.
On our way back to the house we made a stop off at the oldest church in England. The Saxa Gotha church was built out of pieces of Roman roads, pagan alters and old Christian crosses. The person who showed us around was the sweetest and funniest old lady we met the entire trip. Our professor has brought over a group for twenty years and she is retiring this year, so the two ladies had tea and dessert for us. We really enjoyed meeting them.
On the weekend we were free to do as we wished, so we all piled into a car and went into North Allerton to do some shopping and be lazy. I had been trying to get a picture of me standing a field of rape because I thought the yellow blooms were so pretty, and I managed to get the picture finally on our way out. On Sunday a few of us went out to the Lake District to visit the area and see Beatrix Potter's house. It was a pleasant drive and we made lots of Pride and Prejudice quotes. (One of the girls brought the movie and we watched it almost every day.)
No comments:
Post a Comment