Week 3 in London

What a whirlwind of a week! By our very last excursion to Jane Austen's cottage on Saturday morning, we were all a little droopy--but happy! It was a very successful trip. Mike and I packed our raincoats and umbrella. This is England, after all. But I wished I'd taken my sunglasses. We had beautiful blue skies all week, and by the end of the week it was actually hot.

Monday: Class in the morning, preparation for leaving (which, for me, means checking and double-checking all our bookings, making sure our itinerary works in the real world, etc.).

Tuesday: We left bright and early, at 6:45 AM. (OK, 6:50 AM. But five minutes late for such an early departure is pretty amazing. The students have been troopers throughout this term.) Our first stop was Dover castle, on the southeast coast of England.

Dover Castle

Like all English castles, it has been built and rebuilt many times over the centuries, but its earliest parts go back to Anglo Saxon times (600-1066 AD). 

Exposed Anglo-Saxon wall in church at Dover Castle

It also did good service in the Napoleonic Wars and in the twentieth century, as a WWII defense post.

English Heritage, which manages many of the historical sites in England, shifts its interpretation of each site every few years to reflect the latest historical interpretations, and historians and archaeologists are now stressing the fact that our image of medieval castles as cold, colorless places is not accurate. They were meant to display both the strength and the splendor of English kings.

For strength, you can't beat Norman architecture, like the castle Henry II (husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine, inadvertent (!?) murderer of Thomas Beckett) built at Dover Castle.

Henry II's castle at Dover

Here are a couple of shots of the interior, with bright tapestries, curtains, and brilliantly painted furniture.

Queen and consort

Several rooms had recordings of the sounds and conversations that might have taken place at the castle during Henry's reign. There were even a few projections of ghostly images moving around--a sentry in an alcove near the entrance, for instance.

It was a busy day at the castle. We always go in the group entrances, as BYU has English Heritage and National Trust memberships, so we're often trailing other educational groups, but they tend to be primary school children.

Fellow field trippers at Dover

After leaving Dover, we stopped (on our wonderful bus driver Jimmy MacDonald from Newcastle's suggestion) at a memorial to the pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain.

Our group, with White Cliffs of Dover in background

And here's a monument to the pilots who flew countless missions over the English channel and southern England, trying to intercept German bombers. They are the men about whom Winston Churchill said "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Memorial to RAF pilots in Battle of Britain

Our second big stop for the day was at the town of Battle, north of Hastings.  Battle is the site of the Battle of Hastings, 1066, in which the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold, was killed and William of Normandy conquered England. William built an abbey there some years after the conquest in order to appease the Pope who thought he had shed too much blood in the conquest. (I wonder if he meant the initial battles or the "harrying of the north" in the years afterward. William allowed his Anglo-Saxon subjects to retain their lands and offices in the initial years of the conquest, but a couple of uprisings led him to change his mind. He swept through England like Sherman through Georgia, burning and plundering and seizing the lands and offices for his Norman friends and relatives. So thoroughly were the Anglo-Saxons displaced that French became the official language (the lingua franca) of the English court and elite for centuries afterward.)

The conquest is memorialized in the Bayeux tapestry, stitched by English women, but designed by Normans and definitely presenting their point of view. I love this animation of the tapestry:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_559561&feature=iv&src_vid=bDaB-NNyM8o&v=LtGoBZ4D4_E

Remains of the monks' quarters at Hastings

Interior view of the monks' quarters

This memorial, placed in 1903, is actually French. The leading phrase "Diex Aie!" is old Norman and means "God be with us!," which happens to be the battle cry the Normans used when they charged at the Battle of Hastings. The rest of the memorial commemorates King Harold--the defeated English king--as a brave warrior. Kind of odd, huh? It's a great example of the reinterpretation and use of history. It came at a time when the perennially icy relations between the French and the English were thawing a little. (The two nations signed an "Entente Cordiale" in April 1904). The plaque was erected by a sororal organization, something like the "Daughters of the Norman Invasion." It seems to have been a way for the French to say, "Sorry about that invasion thing. Friends?"

1903 French memorial to Battle of Hastings

We stayed the first night in three different hotels in Chichester, near Portsmouth. Mike and I, and some of the students, strolled over to the city center to look around. On our way we passed a clock tower/monument erected either in the era of Charles I or later, to honor him. 

Charles I on clock tower at Chichester

Drainage pipe gargoyle on the roof of Chichester Cathedral

We loved the feel of Chichester. Like all English towns with "chester," "cester," or "caster" in their names, Chichester was once a Roman encampment (caster = encampment) and later a walled city. The walls have crumbled and been rebuilt many times but are still in the same place. I took my morning walk around them.

Wednesday: Mike and I got up early to take a look at the interior of Chichester Cathedral, which was closed when we arrived. It was a beautiful building, with a mix of old and new. In one place a portion of the floor was cut away to reveal a Roman tile floor underneath.

Roman tile under the floor of Chichester Cathedral

Modern stained-glass at Chichester Cathedral, depicting the Savior raising Peter after he tried to walk on water.

There were a couple of 12th century carvings protected by glass on one wall, and an effigy (carved images of the occupants of tombs) of a 13th century knight and lady holding hands. (It was considered very unusual for members of the upper classes to have such a demonstration of affection on their tomb. Elite marriages were always arranged for political purposes, not for love.)

Loving knight and lady at Chichester Cathedral

Once our scattered group was reunited, we walked over to the Fishbourne Roman Palace, a ruin discovered in the 1960s and partially preserved. (The unexcavated part actually extended beneath the hotel where most of our group stayed the previous night.) This was an amazing place. I was so struck by the wonderful complexity of the mosaics, discovered accidentally when a backhoe was cutting a trench for a water pipe. 

Path of backhoe that accidentally discovered the Roman Palace at Fishbourne

Soon after the backhoe started turning up bits of Roman tile, local amateur historians and archaeologists managed to halt the digging, call in professional archaeologists, and begin publicizing the find, hoping that someone would step in to purchase and preserve the site. Luckily, someone did, and the pavilion covering the excavated mosaics is the result.

What the original palace would have looked like.

We had a great tour from a staff archaeologist explaining how they are able to determine the size and layout of the site through digging small pits in surrounding gardens. The palace was in use for a couple of hundred years before fire destroyed it, so it underwent a series of renovations, with old floors being covered by newer ones.

Old Roman floors

Newer Roman floors

The mosaic of cupid riding on the back of a dolphin was amazing. So was the sea horse.

Cupid on dolphin's back

Sea horse

And did you know that the Romans heated their homes with a "hypocaust" system that pushed hot air into channels beneath their floors? Very sophisticated for 200 AD, I'd say.

Roman hypocaust system

Brits love their Roman past and take great pride in it, which I find somewhat ironic given the fact that the Romans conquered them (or at least they conquered the Celts, who were here when they arrived. Most of the current stock of the island is Anglo-Saxon, who came later). 

Come play a Roman soldier!

After Fishbourne, we boarded a ferry for the Isle of Wight and drove to Queen Victoria's summer palace, Osborne House.

Osborne House on the Isle of Wight

It was a vast estate, with the central house, a walled garden full of flowers, fruits and vegetables, and a lily pond.

Lily Pond at Queen Victoria's home on the Isle of Wight

It also had a swiss cottage Prince Albert had built for his children, as a sort of schoolhouse where they could learn housekeeping and gardening. In the little shed in the garden were small wheelbarrows, each with a prince or princess's initials on the front. And on the beach beyond the cottage was Queen Victoria's bathing machine, where she could change into her swimsuit, be rolled out into the water, and descend on stairs, with dignity, rather than bumbling out through the waves.

We were not allowed to take pictures inside the house, which was full of spectacular art, including  a whole wing with paintings of The Empress of India (Victoria)'s Indian subjects. We had to wait for ten minutes or so to let another group go in, and there was a little stone alcove near the door where about ten of us sat. It had an arch similar to the one in the Abbot's kitchen at Glastonbury, so we decided to do some more singing. A few heads poked out of the upper windows of the palace, and an older woman planted herself right next to us, leaned against the railing, and listened to us do about five different hymns. "Lovely! Just lovely!" she said as we marched in.

Outside the walled garden was a lovely statue of a stone angel. Fans of Doctor Who will know why I couldn't turn to face the camera.

Don't blink!

We stayed in vacation cottages at Rookley Country Park in the center of the island that night. After dropping all our things at the cottages, we drove to the far side of the island to hike Tennyson Down and see the memorial to Alfred, Lord Tennyson. My colleague Kristine Hansen had assigned students to read selections from Tennyson's poetry at the top of the hill. One group of two men and two women sang our hymnbook's version of "Ring Out, Wild Bells," which was lovely. The views all the way up the down (a hike of about a mile and a half) were just stunning. Students kept saying that they thought they'd seen the height of English beauty, but it just kept being topped!

The next morning, our travel agent forwarded us this email:

Hi Terri/Jenny

A lovely email from a passer by about your students.

I thought you should know.

Regards

Catherine

From: jbjbjosh@gmail.com [mailto:jbjbjosh@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Josh Bryant
Sent: 10 July 2013 21:29
To: info
Subject: Delightful Youngsters

Good evening,

Today I was walking Spaniel Graham on Tennyson's down on the Isle of Wight when I came across a wonderful group of young enthusiastic American children currently on tour with your company. One of these youngsters took the liberty of holding open the gate for Graham and I and so I felt obliged to send you this email simply to say how impressed I was with their behaviour. 

I would like nothing more than to contact the school or the group with which the children were travelling simply to pass on my appreciation. It would be wonderful if you could pass on this message to the group, or let me know who they were travelling with so that I can contact them myself.

Sincerely,

Josh Bryant

They really are a good group, kind to each other and courteous to others.  We're enjoying them.  I'll post some pictures of Tennyson Down once I get them from Kristine (I forgot to take my camera!)

More later.