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.

Week 2 in London, Part 2

Wednesday: After teaching, we took the students to the Tower of London. Mike and I had been there several times, so he stayed home to work. There were a few interesting changes. One was the addition of wire-mesh sculptures of animals throughout the grounds. As early as King John's time (John was the king who was so bad that his barons forced him to sign the Magna Carta, which became the foundation for English liberties--and America's) there were wild, exotic animals kept on the grounds of the Tower of London. Monarchs of other nations had a hard time thinking of gifts their fellow monarchs did not already have, so they ended up sending things like polar bears, giraffes, baboons, and lions. Eventually, there were over a hundred wild beasts of various kinds on the grounds, where they served as a royal zoo for curiosity seekers up until the nineteenth century, when one too many attacks on visitors led to a wholesale transfer of the menagerie to the London Zoo in Regent's Park. 

Wire sculpture elephant at the Tower of London

Wire sculpture baboons at the Tower of London

I skipped the crown jewels this time around. Not that interesting to me. But I enjoyed seeing the inscriptions of prisoners on the wall of the Salt Tower (mostly Jesuits sent there for proselyting or intriguing to kill the Queen after the English reformation), and Sir Walter Raleigh's cushy rooms in the Bloody Tower (the place where the two York princes were supposedly kept before they were murdered by someone. They've currently got a voting machine set up in the room, and visitors, after reading the abbreviated evidence, can cast their vote for the murderer:  Richard III, Henry VII, or "other." Richard the III is currently leading Henry VII, but not by a long ways. I voted for Richard III (sorry, Mom!) Raleigh was kept in comfortable rooms, along with his family, for many years. Elizabeth never had the heart to execute him. Her successor, James I, had no such softness for the man. He was trying to make nice with Spain, which had suffered considerably from Raleigh's pirating expeditions, so he yielded to their demands that Raleigh be executed in 1618.

Sir Walter Raleigh's room in the Bloody Tower

I don't have a photo of my favorite part of the Tower--St. John's chapel in the White Tower itself. (Most chapels request no photographs.) I don't remember seeing it before. It was a very spare, undecorated but beautiful room, with clean-cut Norman arches on two levels creating wonderful shadows with the lighting.

Borrowed image of St. John's Chapel in the White Tower

Old Saxon Wall in All Hallow's Church

Thursday: Happy Fourth of July! As you might imagine, there wasn't a whole lot of celebrating here. Mike and I decided to go to a free organ concert at All Hallow's Church near the tower. It's another of the very old churches of London whose foundations go back into the 7th century or earlier. This church was bombed in WWII, but all the old bits still standing were incorporated into the rebuilt church. For example, it includes a Saxon wall, circa 7th century, which used old Roman tiles in its arch.

Being so near the Thames, this church has traditionally been associated with sailors and has a number of models of ships displayed inside, as well as a stained glass window commemorating the Port of London authority.

Port of Authority window at All Hallow's Church

The coolest part of the church, to my way of thinking, was the crypt, which displayed objects found when the church was rescued from the WWII rubble. Turns out that the church was built on the site of a prosperous Roman home. Some of the pavement is still visible, and many interesting objects. At some point someone built a diorama depicting how Roman London would have looked. I don't know how historically accurate it is, but it is very cool.

Diorama of Roman London in crypt of All Hallow's Church

Wanting to celebrate the Fourth somehow, Mike and I walked to the Benjamin Franklin house, where Franklin lived when he was an agent for Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in the 1760s. They were booked to the gills and had to turn us away. (We'll go back another time.) Mike had an appointment with a colleague at Great Ormond Street Hospital, so he headed back home and I went to Leicester Square to see if there were any good tickets to be had at the half-price ticket booth. As I approached the kiosk, I saw (drumroll . . .) Herman! I knew he was going to be in London, but I didn't remember when, and we hadn't emailed each other. How bizarre to accidentally run into your brother in a metropolis of that size! We exchanged contact information and met for lunch at the OXO tower on the South Bank on Friday. (Good food--great view!)

Lunch at the OXO Tower with Herman

The City of London festival is going on for the next several weeks--a series of musical, dramatic, educational, and artistic presentations sponsored by the city. They sponsored the Britten War Requiem I went to my first week in London. I also bought tickets to a performance of Britten's operetta, The Prodigal Son. It was performed in Southwark Cathedral on the South Bank--a beautiful setting, with the setting sun lighting up the stained glass behind the performers. It was a beautiful performance, too, particularly the voice of the "tempter."

Benjamin Britten's "The Prodigal Son" at Southwark Cathedral

We had a lovely stroll back along the riverside.

Southwark Cathedral

Sunset over the Thames

The walking bridge across the Thames--Millenium Bridge.  

Mike and I hung out there for quite a while listening to a busker playing the xylophone. He was utterly amazing, playing multi-chord classical pieces at dizzying speed. He was so good that we had to walk back and give him a few pounds.

Friday: After lunching with Herman, Mike and I went home for a quick dinner, then back to town to see our first West End musical--Top Hat (based on the old Irving Berlin movie with Fred Astaire). It was sheer, unadulterated delight. We didn't stop smiling through the entire show. Great songs, fun plot, fabulous dancing, particularly the two leads. What fun!

Saturday: Our second day trip, this time to Stratford-on-Avon to see Shakespeare sites and watch "Hamlet" at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. We visited Anne Hathaway's cottage.

Anne Hathaway's cottage at Stratford-on-Avon

The (in)famous second-best-bed Shakespeare left to Anne Hathaway

Our guide opined that leaving her the second-best bed may actually have been a sentimental gesture. The best bed was always reserved for guests, so the second-best bed would actually have been "their" bed. A nicer story, certainly.

Shakespeare's grave at Trinity Church in Stratford

Shakespeare's memorial, erected by his wife and family after his death

Another fascinating aspect of Trinity Church is its evidence of the violence of the English Reformation. Iconoclasts hacked images of Catholic saints or of Christ off of carvings in many churches.

Defaced image in Trinity Church

They missed one image, tucked away in a place difficult to see but visible in a mirror near the altar.

Surviving image of Christ, captured in mirror

The play lasted three and a half hours (!). I learned later that it was the very first play one of our students had ever seen. What a way to start! It was very well done, set in a sort of modern, despotic state. Hamlet was played by Jonathan Slinger, and it was an amazing, intelligent performance. Very dark staging.

Sunday: A very busy day. If this is the day of rest, why am I so tired? Last time I taught a Relief Society lesson on the sabbath, I came across this scripture, which answers the question quite well, I think.

Isaiah 58:13-14:

13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words,
14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.

The idea is that we don't do OUR ways or OUR pleasure on the Sabbath, but we DO work. We do the Lord's work--sometimes a lot of it. I had to prepare a primary lesson and a fireside for our students. When I got to church the chorister was running late, so I ended up leading the music in sacrament meeting. The bishop asked Mike and me to bear our testimonies in Fast and Testimony meeting, which we did. (I told them Mitchum had been our first ward in England in 1965, Dad, but didn't have time to ask who the bishop was that year.) Next I taught primary, then led the music in Sharing time, then raced home to prepare a dinner for six of our students, my co-director Kristine Hansen, and Herman, then gave a fireside on ancient Christianity in Britain, including teaching the students to sing England's national hymn, "Jerusalem." Whew! But it all went well, and it was fun to have Herman here tonight. Our students are really good singers. When we start harmonizing on a hymn, we sound fabulous!

Sign we pass on the way to the Mitchum Ward

Busy week coming up--our first long road trip, to Dover, the Isle of Wight, Winchester, and Tintagel. Back on Saturday. Until then!

Week 2 in London

The highlight of week 2 was Mike's arrival on Monday. Mike travels quite a bit, and I travel a little bit, so we have spent many days and nights apart, but ten days is an unusually long stretch, and we were very glad to be back together.

In addition to bringing himself, Mike brought me some things I hadn't been able to find here:

brown sugar
baking soda
baking powder
chocolate chips
crisco
vanilla
Mapleine
various spices

Notice the baking theme? Much baking is done, at all times, in the Pulsipher household. I get the feeling that, at least in London, nobody cooks from scratch. On the other hand, sweets and biscuits (translation: candy and cookies) occupy a much more prominent and abundant position in grocery stores here than at home. So people are buying goodies; they're just not baking them. (So why are there so few overweight people here? It's a puzzle.) To celebrate the arrival of my spices, I made Southwest Chicken Pasta salad, which we've been eating for dinner and lunch ever since. And last night I made chocolate chip halfway cookies, in preparation for our first group of students to come over for Sunday dinner. Here's the first batch. Like my pans? I got them for 99 pence each at the 99p store!:

Chocolate chip halfway cookies for our first student dinner

Mike helped by beating the egg whites, which is a whole lot harder by hand than with a mixer. (I know, I beat the first batch, which is why I recruited Mike to beat the second.)

Mike beating egg whites by hand (groan)

Mike also brought over a set of king-sized sheets and a mattress cover to convert our two twin beds into one bed. And we decided to borrow a couple of mattresses from the London Centre to put on top of our very uncomfortable ones. Alvaro, who manages the London Centre along with his wife Thais, drove the mattresses over for us, along with a mattress for my co-director Kristine.  That night I slept EIGHT HOURS! The first time I had slept more than six the entire time I've been here. Hooray!

Here is the recap for the week:

Monday: Mike arrived! To keep him awake, I took him along to see the exhibit of Tudor and Stuart kings and queens at the National Portrait Gallery. Lots of the most famous images of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and others were on display. My favorite portrait was of a mother and son, newly restored to favor under Henry VIII, in all their finery. The gold lace and beads just popped out of the painting. (Mike and I both noticed that some painters seemed to devote more time and attention to the clothing than the faces. Not surprising, as the clothing is what announced your wealth and status to the world.)

Tuesday: Group trip to Hampton Court Palace. Here's one of the sculptures of royal animals, welcoming us into the palace:

The English Unicorn

I'd last been there in high school, on a tour led by Tom Moore, but much has changed (and improved) since then. My favorite improvement: At four times throughout the day, costumed Tudor characters (Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, Lady Rochford [Anne Boleyn's sister-in-law], and Thomas Seymour) appeared at various places in the palace and enacted scenes related to the king's rising dissatisfaction with Anne Boleyn and courting of Jane Seymour. They interacted with the audience, who they addressed as friends of Lady Rochford. (There was a great bit where Thomas Seymour spoke of a wife's proper submission to her husband, and he singled out Mike as a husband who looked distinctly henpecked!)

Actors portraying King Henry VIII and Thomas Seymour

Mike in a Hampton Court hallway

There were so many interesting things to see, we ended up staying for five hours. One half of the palace has been preserved (or restored to) its original Tudor state. The palace was owned by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey before he fell into disfavor and Henry seized it for himself.  Wolsey had been incredibly rich and powerful. He had placed bas-relief images of several Roman emperors--including Nero!--on the walls at the entrance to the palace and in its main courtyard as a way of invoking or honoring their power.

I also loved the four-screen video dramatization of a privy council meeting, discussing the events on the day of Henry VIII's wedding to his last wife, Catherine Parr (or, as all the historical sites are now spelling it, Kathryn Parr). Beautifully acted and historically accurate.  I wish I had a copy of it to show my classes.

The other half of the palace was restored to its late Stuart and Georgian splendor. There was a very odd exhibit called "secrets of the royal bedchamber" that introduced visitors to the elaborate ceremonies and political jockeying surrounding Stuart and Georgian monarch's levees and couchees (getting up and going to bed, accompanied by an adoring public). At the entrance to the exhibit was a big room filled with overstuffed mattresses, with an impressionistic film playing on the ceiling. Mike and I were very happy to take a load off our feet for a while--and the mattresses were very comfortable. Still, the idea of a roomful of tourists napping together is very strange. . .

There were lots of lovely gardens as well, and whimsical sculptures.

Delightful garden at Hampton Court

Sculpture growing out of my head at Hampton Court

Resting with disapproving server at Hampton Court

As you can see in the last image, we (or at least I) got very tired walking around. We refreshed ourselves midday by having a welcome repast in Henry VIII's kitchen. We had chicken stew and a hunk of bread, and scones with jam and clotted cream for dessert. Very fun day.

Part 2 to come later . . .