West of Ireland (2): Connemara in the Mist and the Rain

Visiting a Beautiful and Remote Corner of Ireland's West Coast in the Direst of Weather

Where is Connemara Exactly?

Ireland

County Galway

As Ireland’s second largest county, Galway covers a big chunk of the map and is sliced in two by Lough Corrib, the republic’s largest lake. County Galway’s eastern two thirds is flat farmland, the western third is Connemara where mountains, bogs and a richly indented coastline create a land of legendary beauty.

Connemara, the western third of County Galway

It was our 41st wedding anniversary. Nobody had told the weather gods, but undaunted and weighed down by a full Irish breakfast, we set out to explore. We drove west to Salthill, Galway's beach resort neighbour/suburb. It was not intentional, we were aiming northwest along the N59 to Oughterard, but somehow missed our target. It may have been high summer, but the cool, damp morning rendered Salthill less than appealing.

Aughnanure Castle

Turning north we eventually found the N59. Just before Oughterard we took a minor road past the golf course signposted to Aughnanure Castle. The road petered out with no castle in sight, but there was a car park and a footpath beside a stream. We had not walked far when suddenly the castle was looming above us.

Aughnanure Castle, Lynne, the Tower House, Gatehouse and part of the inner wall

The O’Flaherty’s were Kings of Connemara from the 11th to the 16th century and Aughnanure Castle was one of their strongholds. A well preserved tower house, the guardhouse and parts of the inner and outer walls have survived. Rural clans regarded a little neighbourly cattle raiding as normal procedure and Ireland has over 500 such tower houses where cattle could be corralled within the outer wall when necessary.

The Guardhouse, Aughnnure Castle

A home when all was peaceful and a refuge in times of trouble, Aughnanure, built in the 16th century, was a late example of its type. Defenceless against artillery, tower houses became obsolete only when the armies of Oliver Cromwell introduced cannon to Ireland a hundred years later, by which time the O’Flaherty’s had already lost Aughnanure.

The upper floor inside the tower house, Augnanure Castle

The castle is now owned by Dúchas (Irish Heritage) and we bought Heritage Cards there giving us access to all their sites.

Oughterard and Lough Corrib

Oughterard, a couple of miles up the main road is a small town, but offered several coffee options. We dropped into a pub which at eleven o'clock was not only serving coffee but also breakfast - and not only to tourists.

A side road took us to Lough Corrib, a picturesque expanse of water, though it would have looked better if the weather had cheered up.

Lough Corrib

Leenane and Killary Harbour

But cheering up was the last thing on its mind as we continued along the N59, then turned north through Joyce Country (named for the Norman-Welsh family who settled there in the 13th century, not James Joyce, though he was a descendant). The natural delights of Joyce Country are well documented but we have to take that on trust, we saw little more than mist and drizzle.

Reaching the other part of the N59 loop, we arrived at Leenane at the tip of Killary Harbour, Ireland’s only fjord. We had lunch - a sandwich and a cup of tea - in a café there. 'It's a nice day,' the girl said as I paid the bill. Hearing no sarcasm in her voice, I paused unsure how to reply. She saw my expression and said, 'Well it's not raining,' and, to be fair, at that precise moment it was not. It was a milder day than yesterday, though hardly warm, and perhaps that is all it takes to be a ‘nice day' in these parts.

Me blocking out the view of Killary Harbour from the front, while the mist does the same from behind

A few miles further on, the road veers left and the fjord bends right. Across the water and round the bend the flanks of Mweelrea, the highest mountain in Connaught, drop precipitately into the sea. Not that we saw it, the mountain was sulking in the mist.

On to Clifden

We continued towards Clifden, passing Kylemore Abbey which has been a Benedictine monastery since 1920 but was originally a grand Victorian country house. The abbey and its garden are open to the public, but it was expensive, not covered by our Heritage Card and raining, so no visit and no photographs. Instead here is a picture of some fuchsias. Hedgerows throughout Connemara are alive with wild fuchsias, but these were photographed a couple of days later in Kerry where the weather was more cooperative.

Fuchsia hedgerow, County Kerry

Approaching Clifden, scenic circuits known as 'The Bog Road' and 'The Sky Road' head off towards the coast. On another day we might have explored one or the other, but our appetite for more views of mist and drizzle was limited.

Clifden is by far the largest town in Connemara, which is not saying much, but after crossing miles of scenic nothing (not that we saw it) it looked like a metropolis. Central Connemara is one of the Gaeltachtaí areas where a large enough proportion of the population speak Irish for it to be officially treated as the first language. Clifden, an Anglophone town beyond the Gaeltacht, was a 19th century development and may be a pleasant place, but in the rain nowhere looks its best. The northern and southern branches of the N59 converge here ensuring the narrow streets enjoy a semi-permanent traffic jam. We wanted to leave on the small R341 towards Ballinaboy (Ireland's a great place for connoisseurs of place names) and that involved crossing an endless stream of traffic inching forward with windscreen wipers flapping.

In Search of Alcock and Brown

On the 14th of June 1919 John Alcock and Arthur Brown left Newfoundland in a converted First World War bomber aiming to win a £10,000 prize for being the first to fly the Atlantic in a single hop. Fifteen difficult hours later they sighted Clifden and knew success was theirs. They had hoped to continue towards London, but technical problems required an immediate landing. South of Clifden they thought they had found a smooth field, but these are rare in Connemara and they soon found themselves nose down in what had turned out to be a bog.

A different but very similar Connemara bog

According to the Rough Guide a monument commemorating their achievement stands beside the R341 opposite the remains of Marconi's first transatlantic wireless station - from which they sent news of their triumph.

Driving south we came across a carpark with the names of Alcock, Brown and Marconi prominently displayed. There were some foundations, presumably the wireless station, some information about the adjacent bog and a suggested bog walk, which we declined, seeing the conditions.

Opposite was a minor road and on the corner a sign pointing into the empty field where we expected the monument to be. ‘Perhaps,’ we thought, ‘the sign should point up the lane.’

A signpost pointing into an empty field

Something up that lane required a steady trickle of large lorries to drive down it. Twice in a kilometre we reversed to find somewhere a truck wider than the road could get past.

The Alcock and Brown Monument on top of a dismal, windswept, drizzle-sodden hill,

Persevering to the top of the dismal windswept, drizzle-sodden hill we found a sculpture of Alcock and Brown’s tail-plane, erected in 1959 to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the flight. According to the plaque it is two kilometres north of the actual landing site. Presumably this spot was picked more for scenic potential than geographical accuracy. The views down either flank of the hill into Clifden Bay would be attractive on a different day.

Clifden Bay from the Alcock and Brown Memorial, A fine view on a better day

Later research has suggested the carpark signs had been misleading. Marconi's station is a kilometre further on and a memorial cairn stands in the field opposite, closer to the landing site, but still quarter of a mile from it.

Alcock and Brown were knighted but having survived flying in WW1 and their trans-Atlantic adventure, their luck began to run out. Sir John Alcock died months later in a flying accident. Sir Arthur Brown had a business career but suffered ill-health and died in 1948 aged 62 having never recovered from the death of his son, a pilot shot down in WW2.

The drive back to Clifden was interesting. At one point we, and a small but ever growing line of vehicles had to back up to allow someone to drive a full sized bus down the country lane - rather them then me, but better not at all. Then we queued patiently through Clifden’s one-way system before starting the 80km journey back to Galway.

Patrick Pearse's Cottage, Rosmuc

On the way we detoured to Rosmuc to see Patrick Pearse's Cottage. We had bought our Heritage Cards and meant to make use of them.

Pearse used the whitewashed thatched cottage as a residence and a summer school in the heart of the Gaeltacht for his Irish language students from Dublin. A large visitor centre is currently being built nearby that looks worryingly out of scale with both the cottage and the village.

Patrick Pearse's cottage, Rosmuc

Pearse was born in Dublin. His father was English, his mother Irish and Irish speaking. He developed a love for her threatened language and worked hard to preserve it, but Pearse was not just a language activist, he was also a nationalist.

Albert Einstein observed that 'nationalism is infantile, mankind's measles.' I agree and feel uncomfortable with nationalism of any hue. The guide - or rather lecturer, you can hardly have a guided tour of a two room cottage – clearly regarded Pearse as something of a hero.

The Irish Home Rule bill passed through the British parliament and became law in September 1914, but further action was suspended for the duration of the Great War. Most Irish independence campaigners accepted this delay, but not all. Arguing that they should strike while the enemy was otherwise occupied Patrick Pearse was among the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. The rebels sought help from Germany - at a time when 200,000 Irishman were fighting against Germany as volunteers in the British army - but when the weapons they sent were intercepted by the British the rising was first called off and then reinstated. The inevitable confusion meant that it went off at half-cock and when Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on the steps of Dublin Post Office on Easter Monday it was already doomed. Little over a thousand combatants were active in Dublin and planned risings elsewhere petered out before they began.

Lynne in Patrick Pearse's cottage

If the Easter Rising had elements of duplicity and incompetence, the British response plumbed the depths of stupidity. The rising was easily put down, but artillery was used inside Dublin with as much disregard for collateral damage as the Americans in Vietnam (over 50% of the 500 who lost their lives were civilians) and the subsequent round-up of suspects was carefully calibrated not to win hearts and minds. Then, showing a rare talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, they court marshalled the instigators, including Patrick Pearse, put them in front of a firing squad and created martyrs and folk heroes while turning their Rising into the stuff of legend.

I have no wish to defend British imperialism, but I do not like nationalism either and when I came across Pearse’s comments on the Great War …

It is patriotism that stirs the people. Belgium defending her soil is heroic, and so is Turkey . . . . . .
It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.
Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country

…I knew he was not my sort of hero.

Lynne in Patrick Pearse's cottage, Rosmuc

We drove back to Galway. Our day out in Connemara had its moments, we saw enough to know that it is beautiful country and the weather did not entirely ruin it, though it tried hard. As wedding anniversary days out go it certainly ranked above 2007, when we spent the whole day waiting for glacially slow bureaucracy to allow us across the Russian/Mongolian border.

In the evening we celebrated at Loam, one of Galway’s two Michelin starred restaurants - and that excellent dinner is the subject of the next post.

The West of Ireland

Part 1: Galway
Part 2: Connemara in the Mist and the Rain
Part 3: Loam, Fine Dining in Galway
Part 4: Athenry, The Burren and Ennis
Part 5: Adare, Listowel and on to Tralee
Part 6: The Dingle Peninsula
Part 7: Killarney to Kenmare
Part 8: Ardfert, Flying-boats and Limerick

West of Ireland (1): Galway

Featuring a Stroll Round Ireland's West Coast Party City

Shannon Airport: A Former Pioneer Fighting Back from Irrelevance

Ireland

County Clare

For us, the West of Ireland started at Shannon, the airport that time forgot. Trans-Atlantic air services started in the 1930s with flying boats taking off and landing in the Shannon estuary. In 1936, realising that flying boats would soon be obsolete but that this was still the nearest piece of Europe to North America, the Irish government started building an airport on a patch of boggy ground near the river. By 1945 they were ready for the start of the aviation boom and in 1947 introduced the concept of ‘duty free’ shopping. Eventually improving aircraft rendered Shannon’s location irrelevant, though half of all flights between Dublin and the US included a Shannon stop-over until the Open Skies agreement of 2007. Passenger numbers then plummeted but the airport fought back, upgrading the terminal and attracting seasonal services to European holiday destinations. In 2009 Shannon secured some transatlantic trade by becoming the first European airport to offer pre-clearance of America's notoriously long winded immigration and customs procedure. I shall gloss over Shannon’s controversial use as a stop-over for American troop planes and for ‘special rendition’ flights.

Gort, County Galway

We picked up our hire car and headed for the M18 north towards Galway. The motorway ends after less than 40 km near Gort and we decided to drive into the small town for coffee.

Shannon, Gort and Galway

County Galway

The approach to Gort felt surprisingly familiar. From many angles Ireland looks not unlike Great Britain; the cars drive on the left, the signage uses the same colours and the countryside is broadly similar. The approach to Gort was like driving into Porthcawl - a comparison that came to us independently and simultaneously - or any other small seaside town in South Wales with buildings of rendered and white-washed stone

Parking in the wide main street, we crossed the road to O'Connor's Coffee Shop and Bakery.

In 2014, on our first ever visit to Ireland we noticed that after centuries of Irish emigration, Dublin was now welcoming incoming migrants. We had not expected this also to be true of a small town in the far west, but as of 2011, 400 of Gort’s two and a half thousand residents are Brazilians working in meat packing, doing the same jobs as at home but for much higher wages. And sure enough, the first language we heard in the street was Portuguese.

The coffee shop was packed with locals and tourists. The coffee was fine and the bakery would have repaid investigation, but sharing a rock bun, served with butter and jam was all we could manage.

There is little else to see in Gort except the small triangular town square (and how many are actually square?). It had one of those impossibly bright Irish pubs that are imitated throughout the world...

Johnny Walsh's, Market Square, Gort

...and in the middle of the square is a well restored late 18th century market weighhouse.

The Market Weigh House, Gort

The City of Galway

The City of Galway

We continued up the N18 to Galway and after a little doubt about where we actually were found our B&B and they kindly checked us in early.

Selecting an appropriate Irish pub in a city full of them, (not to mention pubs that look like cafés and jewellers that looked like pubs) provoked unnecessary dithering, but eventually we settled on the appropriate place for a bowl of soup (me) and my first encounter with the excellent Irish soda bread and a ham sandwich (Lynne). Murphy's stout made a change from Guinness but to my palate its bitterness was a little more aggressive than I like.

Eyre Square to Lynch's Window

Central Galway from the JF Kennedy Garden in Eyre Square and south through the pedestrianised districts is awash with foreigners of all hues. We heard more European languages than we can recognise and English spoken in the accents of three continents, only Antarctica seemed unrepresented. The vast majority were, like us, tourists, but there were also those who had drifted as far west as they could without wetting their feet and were now holding up signs or inhabiting sandwich boards advertising tattoo parlours, pizzerias or hair stylists.

JF Kennedy Garden, Galway

There were buskers too, everything from a five piece band with guitars, bass and drums to an old man sitting on a doorstep playing the spoons, all placed just so far apart that as one faded to quietness the next swelled to fill the space.

Pedestrianised street, Galway, Some wrapped up warm for an Irish summer, others looked at the calendar, found it was July and wore shorts

Apart from the tourists there is not a vast amount to see in Galway, visitors come to enjoy the relaxed charm of a friendly city where every summer day is spent building up to yet another party night.

Beyond the flowers of the Kennedy gardens are a rusting sculpture of dubious charm,...

A rusting sculpture of dubious charm, Eyre Square, Galway

...,the re-erected 16th century façade of the 'Browne House' which looks a little out of place, and the flags of the fourteen 'tribes of Galway'; the families who ran the city for several centuries.

The flags of the Tribes of Galway with the façade of the Browne House (side on) behind

Strolling south into pedestrian streets we soon encountered Lynch's Castle, Galway’s only remaining medieval secular building. Dating from the late fifteenth century (though much changed over the years) it belonged to the Lynch’s one of the most important of the 14 tribes. It now houses a branch of the Allied Irish bank.

Lynch's 'Castle', Galway

Lynch's window, just south of the pedestrian area, is another piece of Lynch memorabilia. Built in the 19th century, it is a confection of 15th and 17th architectural styles, but the window (top left) is reputed to come from an earlier Lynch house and to be the very window in the story below.

Lynch's Window, Galway

James Lynch, a 15th century Mayor of Galway sent his son to Spain, captaining one of his own ships, to purchase wine. Before the purchase was made the money designated for it had been spent and young Lynch had to use his father’s name to gain credit. The Spanish merchant sent his nephew back to Ireland with young Lynch to collect the debt, but afraid to face his father, Lynch persuaded the crew to join him in throwing the Spaniard overboard. Later a death bed confession by one of the sailors led to young Lynch’s arrest and as Lynch senior was the mayor and magistrate he had to try his own son. He found the young man guilty and sentenced him to death.

On the day of the execution crowds made it impossible for the prisoner and escort to reach the gallows, so the mayor took his son home, tied a rope round his neck and launched him from the window so justice could be done and seen to be done. Some Galwegians claim this is the origin of the term ‘lynching’, but although it was a killing with bizarre elements, it was not the sort of killing the word has come to be associated with.

St Nicholas' Church and Sheridan's Cheese Shop

Behind Lynch's window is St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church dating from 1320 and a rather ugly building from the outside, though it is better inside. The biggest church in this overwhelmingly catholic city, it was once the catholic cathedral but since Henry VIII’s reformation it has belonged to what is now the Church of Ireland, a member of the Anglican Communion. The memorial to the men of Galway who died in the First World War lists an unusually large proportion of officers, which may be something to do with it being the church of the protestant ascendancy.

Inside St Nicholas' Church, Galway

Opposite is Sheridan's Cheese shop. That Galway is a foodie city might not always be obvious, but Sheridan's is one of its leading lights. The display of cheese, including a magnificent array of Irish artisan cheeses, is fascinating and fragrant. They also do an extensive variety of charcuterie, much of it locally produced.

Across the River Corrib and 'Home' via the Latin Quarter

Leaving the pedestrian area we walked south, crossing the Corrib River which flows swiftly through the town, the torrent augmented by canals feeding it from either side. The Galway Museum is near here but it was late in the afternoon, we had left home at 5.30 and were beginning to flag, so we did not bother to look for it.

The River Corrib, Galway

We did not find the 'Spanish Arch' either, but odd remnants of the city's medieval walls were easy to spot.

Section of the city wall, Galway

We walked back via the Latin Quarter, an area of yet more cafés and restaurants. Back in William Street, Lynne took a breather sitting between Oscar Wilde and his contemporary and near namesake, the Estonian writer Eduard Vilde.

Lynne with Oscar Wilde and Eduard Vilde, Galway

Dinner at Murty Rabitt's

In the evening we made a short walk to Murty Rabbitt's. English pub names have, or pretend to have, a historical context while the Irish prefer eponyms, but do the names - Johnny Walsh’s, Foxy John's, Nancy Myles’ - relate to the present owner, a historical owner or are they marketing fictions? Probably there are examples of all three, but Murty Rabbitt's has an explanatory note on the final page of the menu (basic pub food, well presented and reasonably priced).

Murty Rabbitt's Galway

Cormac O' Coinin returned home after making his fortune in the California gold rush. He first bought a flour mill, and when that burned down purchased a pub and grocers [we saw this combination several times during our sojourn] in 1872. On Cormac's death the pub passed to his son Peter who anglicised the family name to Rabbitt* (Coinin is Irish for rabbit) and then to his son and in 1955 to his grandson Murtagh. According to the menu the pub is now run by Murty’s son, and Cormac’s great-great-grandson, John. Another source says it was sold by the family in 2007.

Folk duo, Murty Rabbitt's, Galway

We had an entertaining evening, the food was all we required, the drink was good and the extended family in the booth behind, who had been in residence long enough for inhibitions to be lowered, entertained us with open warfare. Later a duo sang, not for once traditional Irish music, but what, in the 70s, we used to call 'contemporary folk'. A good evening was had by all.

*Was the deed was done before 1902 when Beatrix Potter changed forever the perception of the name 'Peter Rabbit'?

The West of Ireland

Part 1: Galway

Part 2: Connemara in the Mist and the Rain

Part 3: Loam, Fine Dining in Galway

Part 4: Athenry, The Burren and Ennis
Part 5: Adare, Listowel and on to Tralee
Part 6: The Dingle Peninsula
Part 7: Killarney to Kenmare

Part 8: Ardfert, Flying-boats and Limerick
 

Hemingford Grey and Green Knowe

A 'Typical' English Village and an Ancient House with a Literary Connection

Hemingford Grey, So Typical it is Almost Unique

Cambridgeshire

Huntingdonshire

Sunglasses were essential for the two hour drive to Hemingford Grey. The trip had not been planned knowing this would be the warmest day of the year (so far) but we were happy enough that it was. Recent political upheavals suggest England is not at ease with itself, but beneath a smiling sun and a clear blue sky it looked a green and comfortable country.

The M6 and A14 ran freely and we were a couple of miles beyond Huntingdon and almost there before encountering traffic problems. Our planned route (we learned later) would have shown us a straggling village much of it modern and ordinary, but after leaving the A14 a little early we approached via Hemingford Abbot and a couple of wrong turns and fell, as if by magic, into the old village centre. It is one of those places cherished in our national imagination as a 'typical English village', though few of us live in such Gardens of Eden now - or indeed ever did. To paraphrase John Major paraphrasing George Orwell, this is the England of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer and old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.

Thatched house, Hemingford Grey

Apart from the thatched houses, large and small, there were renovated workers cottages….

Former workers' cottages, Hemingford Grey

… and houses where roses climbed the wall.

Roses up the wall, Hemingford Grey

Hemingford Grey is in Huntingdonshire, once a county in its own right but now merely a district of Cambridgeshire and the village pub is Cambridgeshire Dining Pub of the Year. Orwell’s ‘warm beer’ notwithstanding I am sure the beer is as well kept as in the Martin's Arms in Colston Bassett, the Nottinghamshire Dining Pub of the year we visited by happy accident last month. We did however, eschew The Cock today and met our daughter Siân at the Hemingford Garden Room, a Community Interest Company café, in the nearby parish rooms where we lunched in the garden beneath the shade of an umbrella.

The Cock, Hemingford Grey

The River Great Ouse and the Church of St James

Well-fed we strolled up the High Street which ends at the River Great Ouse. Across the river is St James’ church where the spire fell down during a hurricane in 1714. Despite the attempt to turn the stump into an architectural feature, it still looks like a stump.

St James', Hemingford Grey

We strolled down the riverside path until we reached a gate in the hedge.

The Manor, Lucy M Boston's Green Knowe

Hemingford Grey is undoubtedly a pretty village, but not so uniquely pretty we would have driven over two hundred miles between us merely to see it; we were actually on a pilgrimage. Siân says she hardly remembers the BBC adaptation of the Children of Green Knowe - four thirty-minute episodes broadcast in 1986 when she was five - but that led to the purchase of the book, and then to the other five in the series, written by Lucy M Boston between 1954 and 1976. They were read and re-read many times in the following years.

The gate in the hedge took us into The Manor, the home of Lucy Boston from 1939 to her death in 1990, and the inspiration for Green Knowe.

Into the gardens, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

The books feature a rather solitary twelve-year-old with the unlikely name of Toseland (actually the name of a village a few miles south of Hemingford Grey). While his parents are in Burma he spends his school holidays at Green Knowe with his wise and kindly great-grandmother Oldknow. During these visits Toseland (Tolly) meets the other children of the family who have inhabited Green Knowe over the centuries. They are, of course, ghosts, but not frightening spooks, merely young human beings displaced in time.

The writing, gently paced and literary, immerses the reader in this fantasy world and is demanding for young readers. After watching a BBC adaption of the first book, Lynne read all the books to Siân and they both came to love the stories.

Siân had recently discovered that the house is open to the public by appointment. When she phoned she was very excited when her call was answered personally by Diana Boston, Lucy Boston's daughter-in-law.

The Garden in Reality and in Green Knowe

The beautifully tended garden also features in the stories. It contains the malevolent Green Noah, actually a decaying felled tree trunk,….

Green Noah, Hemingford Grey Manor

… a stand of bamboo in which a gorilla is found in one story, and a walking St Christopher, though the statue is new, donated after the 2009 filming of From Time to Time an adaptation of The Chimneys of Green Knowe. Despite having Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville and Timothy Spall in the cast the film was not a success.

St Christopher, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

We wandered round the garden. Among the highlights were the largest thistle I have ever seen (No, that is a cardoon, Siân corrected me)….

Cardoon, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

… and a fancy frilly red tree/shrub which I was pleased to find she could not identify.

Unidentified tree/shrub, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

We sat on a shaded bench with some of the other visitors. The afternoon temperature exceeded 33° - for American (and Daily Telegraph) readers, that is 92°F - which may not impress the people of Baghdad where a recent heatwave has seen temperatures over 50, but to a resident of north Staffordshire...

Diana Boston came out to say 'hello' but regretted that after recent medical treatment she could not conduct the tour herself. She left us in the capable hands of a friend and neighbour whose name I have shamefully forgotten.

The Manor House

The Manor is a Norman tower house built in the 1130s and one of the oldest continually inhabited houses in England. The extension on the left, described by the guide as a 'Tudor lean-to' softened its character though the Georgian makeover, which involved doubling the size of the frontage and making it rectangular, inserting new windows and changing the facing from stone to brick, was probably a misjudgement. Perhaps fortunately, it soon burned down leaving the sturdy medieval stone building intact. The Manor is now its original shape, plus lean-to, though the Georgian windows and brick facing remain.

Originally the house was moated, the line of the moat can still be seen in the lawn, indeed I was standing in it while taking this picture.

The Manor, Hemingford Grey

The Undercoft and the Hair Picture

Our party of ten filed into the house. One of the books’ medieval characters leaves a window open so birds can fly in and nest on a wooden carving, and there in the narrow lobby, was the very ornament surmounted by a birds nest.

Wooden ornament with birds' nest, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

We sat in the medieval undercroft. The Manor, very much a family rather than a ‘stately’ home, is smaller than we had imagined Green Knowe to be, consisting of an undercroft and overcroft, both divided by Tudor partitions, and an attic above - a house did not need many storeys to be a ' tower' in Norman times.

Lucy Boston bought the house in 1939. She arrived fresh from her continental travels wearing Austrian dirndl and speaking fluent German and was understandably treated with some suspicion. The guide traced her thirty year journey from distrusted newcomer to village treasure; in her later years as she was losing her sight, village girls would stop on their way home from school to thread needles for her patchwork.

In summer the garden occupied her time, in winter she worked on patchwork seated by the fire in the chair Lynne occupies in the picture, or on her writing.

Lynne in Lucy Boston's fireside chair, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

As we had walked through the village Sian had mentioned a 'hair picture'. In one of the books a mystery cannot be solved until a picture is made using hair from all the participants. Hanging above the fireplace is the hair picture that inspired that idea, made by a French prisoner during the Napoleonic wars. In the early nineteenth century prisoners of war had to fund their own repatriation when hostilities ended and selling such crafts was one way of doing it.

The hair picture, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

The Tudor Annexe and Lucy Boston's Patchwork

Upstairs in the Tudor annex we were treated to a display of Lucy Boston's patchwork. Whilst admiring the work, this rather went over my head.

Lucy Boston's patchwork, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

I did, though, admire the Norman window into the main bedroom that would once have been on an external wall.

Norman window between the old house and the Tudor extension.

The Overcroft, Great-Grandma Oldknow's Bedroom

The bedroom in the overcroft was Lucy Boston's bedroom, but more excitingly, it was also recognisably great-grandma Oldknow's. With Georgian windows at one end, Norman windows on either side and a Tudor partition at the end, the room exemplified 500 years of architectural styles.

Norman window, Tudor partition, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

The Overcoft, A Magnificent Phonograph and the Gunning Sisters

During World War Two Lucy Boston invited personnel from the nearby RAF bases to use her house for recreation and, in an age when recorded music was not the commonplace it has become, treated them to gramophone concerts. I am old enough to remember wind-up gramophones, but have never seen one as magnificent as this. It still works and the sound reproduction is surprisingly good. In 2012, while sitting in a garden in the northern highlands of Vietnam, Lynne noted the huge variety of useful things she could see made from bamboo. Now she could add gramophone needles to her list.

Listening to Lucy Boston's magnificent gramophone

On the wall was a painting (possibly by Zoffany) of Elizabeth Gunning. Born here in 1733, the second of two sisters born in that year, her father was an impoverished Irish gentleman and her mother a daughter of an Irish aristocrat. The two girls were thrown into London society to make their way without titles or money, relying only on their good looks. At a Valentine’s Day party in 1752 the Duke of Hamilton expressed a desire to marry Elizabeth, then just 18, and the wedding took place that evening. The ensuing scandal provoked a closing of loopholes in the law concerning marriage licences and the calling of banns. The Duke died in 1758, but she became Duchess of Argyll by a second marriage and in 1776 King George III made her a baroness in her own right. My goodness, what a career – though perhaps ‘goodness’, as Mae West observed, had nothing to do with it. Her older sister, Maria, became Duchess of Coventry and a celebrated society hostess. She died of blood poisoning at the age of 27 from the overuse of lead based cosmetics.[update: As Duchess of Coventry Maria Gunning lived in Croome Court in Worcestershire. We visited in 2019 and there is much more about her in that post.]

Miss Gunning, possibly by John Zoffany

Upstairs to Tolly's Domain

Peter Boston, who died 1999, was Lucy’s son and Diana’s husband. He was at university when his mother bought The Manor and an adult when she wrote the books but is nonetheless the inspiration for Tolly. A successful architect, he illustrated all his mother’s books.

We reached ‘Tolly's bedroom’ by a wooden spiral staircase. The toy box, rocking horse and bird cage - all important elements in the stories - looked exactly as they do in the illustrations. This caused great excitement,….

'Tolly's Room' in Green Knowe, The Manor, Hemingford Grey

....but for Siân the ultimate thrill was being able to hold the little carved wooden mouse that is so important to Tolly.

Siân becomes overly excited by a carved mouse, The Manor, Hemingford Grey
....and I did not mean to capture Lynne and myself in the mirror, but as I did...

The guide asked Siân at what age she had come to know the books. 'Six,' she answered with confidence. I was a little surprised, but not as much as the guide. 'They are very demanding books for a six-year-old,' she said.

Descending the stairs we paused while Lynne held our copy of The Children of Green Knowe beside Peter Boston’s original artwork. We had taken the book on our sojourn to Sudan where the desert sun dried out the glue and turned all books into loose-leafed folders. That was in 1987, proving Siân right about enjoying the books as a six-year-old.

Lynne, the Children of Green Knowe and the original cover artwork

We paused in the shop to buy a carved mouse and a DVD of the BBC adaptation.

It can be a mistake to revisit childhood joys, they may not stand up to adult scrutiny, but for Siân (and indeed, Lynne) The Manor was Green Knowe, with all the magic intact. It did not have the same impact for me, the story of a lonely and rather strange twelve-year-old and his great-grandmother held less appeal, but I appreciate the quality of the story telling and slow, gentle way the reader is first beguiled and then sucked inside a unique fantasy world. And The Manor itself? The house is a delight, with or without the Green Knowe connection.