Yesterday we went to Burghley House, named for William Cecil, the First Lord Burghley and chief minister to Good Queen Bess for the bulk of her reign, a spectacular example of the great country estates that began to dominate the English landscape in the reign of the Tudors. No longer castles or fortresses, these magnificent structures often started out using stone quarried from the local monastery which had been closed during Henry VIII's "reformation." The house is still the residence of the Earls of Exeter, but was converted to a trust in 1981.
Here is a view from the park surrounding the home. The wall in the foreground is called a Ha-Ha, I kid you not. It is invisible from the house and is actually one side of a sloped ditch which keeps the sheep and dear grazing in the park from approaching the house. Here is one of the fallow deer and one of our students in the car park being foolish.
The trip was organized for the Honors course here at Harlaxton by Dr. Edward Bujak, one of the permanent professors in the British Studies program, and faculty were invited to go along, so Steph and I joined in and are we ever glad we did. No photographs are permitted inside the house, so you will have to take my word for it when I say it is a visual delight. Room after room of the most exquisite paintings, tapestries, furniture, carvings and woodworking, etc., culminating in the the "Hell Staircase" that depicts the day of judgment and the descent into the nether regions. Pretty darn scary actually.
Outside, the grounds are immaculate and include several thousand acres of woodland and park. The park was designed by "Capability" Brown in the 18th century when all the rage was to destroy the original landscape around the great houses and completely redo them to look "natural"! So, this is a photo looking back at the house from the Lion Bridge which crosses the artificial lake.
And, of course, we had to stop at the Orangery for tea and scones.
Tomorrow, we are off to Whitstable on the Kentish coast, so we will be probably not be posting again until early next week again.
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