Hello again world. I am currently typing this with the Controller of BBC Learning at the desk to my left, it’s freaking me out but am assuming he is far to busy and important to look over my shoulder and anyway have just spent about half an hour on Gumtree with him there which is much more clearly a non work task than this. On that note please let me know if you or anyone you know is looking for a double room to rent on a short term basis from the beginning of May.
Right, this weekend I returned to the maternal bosom and went home to the West Country, to be specific a small town just north of Bristol on the edge of the Cotswolds called Thornbury. Not only did this involve being waited on hand and foot, having steak and roast chicken and Eton mess and large amounts of gin and wine bought to me at all times of night and day but it also provided me with a rich and plentiful supply of cultural delights for my blog, it being a rich and plentiful neighbourhood. My mother has spent over 15 years lecturing me about the history of virtually everything in relation to these sites every time we went for a walk and at last it will come in use.
The Berkeley family is very interesting indeed. I didn’t realise just how influential they were. For example; it was they, or rather a branch of them, who bought a great big house in London and, after a while, granted a large amount of their garden back to the city, or the crown or something, for a public square named, of course, Berkeley Square. This was sold off in 1919 for £2 million in order to restore the castle, probably a mistake I would have thought. One of the Berkeley’s was a philosopher and on his death had his significant library donated to Yale university with the understanding that it would be used to set up a new university on the West Coast which obviously, is now known as the University of California at… Berkeley!! I had never seen the connection as Americans always pronounce it bUUURRkley.
The castle is very lovely inside with some fabulous paintings, tapestries and furniture. Something that particularly took my fancy though was a chair/table/chest thing in one of the kitchens which would be terribly useful in my life as well as some beautiful Van de Velde ship paintings of the various ships under Berkeley command, it being a naval family. The family is also known to this day as being massively into hunting, the Berkeley hunt still takes place each year and they are famous for wearing yellow rather than the traditional red, or pinks or whatever it’s called. Horace Walpole, the subject of last weeks blog was also much taken by the place when he visited and bought several items. Anyway this has gone on for far too long and I have no doubt missed out all the most important things I saw oh well. It was a great day out though and an excellent venue for weddings which they clearly make most of their money out of. See you all next week!
Right, this weekend I returned to the maternal bosom and went home to the West Country, to be specific a small town just north of Bristol on the edge of the Cotswolds called Thornbury. Not only did this involve being waited on hand and foot, having steak and roast chicken and Eton mess and large amounts of gin and wine bought to me at all times of night and day but it also provided me with a rich and plentiful supply of cultural delights for my blog, it being a rich and plentiful neighbourhood. My mother has spent over 15 years lecturing me about the history of virtually everything in relation to these sites every time we went for a walk and at last it will come in use.
First port of call was a favourite walk of ours for many a year which is the walk from Wotton under Edge to the Tyndale Monument. Wotton is a very pretty very old village/town that gets its name from its position directly under a steep hill which is the edge of the Cotswolds, i.e. it’s under the edge. Basic huh? It seems to have been owned by the Berkeley's since time began, a family that you will learn more about in but a few paragraphs. Lucky you. Overlooking Wotton is the Tyndale Monument, erected in 1866 by the people of the area, and that is where we head for our walk as it’s on a big hill and can be seen for miles around.
Tyndale was very important. He was born in 1490 very near the site of said monument and is thought to have taught the family of a local landowner for a while round the corner. He was educated at Oxford and at some point after this decided, inspired by Lutheranism and all that stuff, to translate the Wycliffe bible into English, so everyone could read the word of god and therefore hasten on the massive decline and eventual death of Christianity after everyone realised it was a load of crap. I should say here that if you’re offended by this hahahahahahaha - you a barbaric and delusional retard I have no time for you and neither does my blog and frankly I am offended by you. Anyway, translate it he did for the good of all mankind and, unable to print it in England he went to Germany where it was produced and smuggled back into England. By the time of his arrest in 1535 Tyndale had translated both the Old and New Testaments. He was sentenced to death and on 16 October 1536 was strangled and burnt at the stake at Vilvorden, near Brussels. His dying prayer: 'Lord open the King of England's eyes' was answered the following year Tyndale's English Bible was printed in England 'with the Kings most gracious licence'. The King James Version of 1611 also follows Tyndale's New Testament very closely. So, pretty important guy really. The Victorians being AMAZING as always decided to erect a big old monument to him on the top of the hill and it was done up again for the millennium I believe and you can now go all the way up to the top. This I did, going up a very tight and not un-scary spiral staircase and for some reason my legs still haven’t recovered. The view from up there was amazing though, especially in the almost-summer like day we had on Saturday. 
On Sunday alas the weather was slightly less fabulous but not put off in the least we set out, this time accompanied by my father, to Berkeley Castle, but 15 mins drive from our house. Berkeley castle is the oldest inhabited castle in England and has been lived in by the same family for almost 900 years. Not bloody bad. Unlike many other castles it has not gone through significant modernisation over the centuries and the castle has expanded around a 12th century keep that still remains today. Much of the rest of the castle is 14th century. It was built appropriately enough to keep out the Welsh hoards, jolly good thing too. It was given by Henry II to Robert FitzHardinge, Governor of Bristol (who was descended from the Kings of Demnark), with power to strengthen and enlarge it, in roughly 1150. Its proper job fortified with holes for boiling oil to be poured down, a natural moat and crenulations etc. There are those slit windows for arrows and also trick stairs when you first come in with steps designed at different heights to trip people up when running up them. Clever. It was breached once by Parliamentarians during the English civil war, given back to the family a while later under the instructions that the broached walls, which took 3 days for the Parliamentarians to destroy, would remain ruined so the castle would never again be such a strong and therefore dangerous fortress. However, other than that it’s still a complete castle which is pretty impressive.
On Sunday alas the weather was slightly less fabulous but not put off in the least we set out, this time accompanied by my father, to Berkeley Castle, but 15 mins drive from our house. Berkeley castle is the oldest inhabited castle in England and has been lived in by the same family for almost 900 years. Not bloody bad. Unlike many other castles it has not gone through significant modernisation over the centuries and the castle has expanded around a 12th century keep that still remains today. Much of the rest of the castle is 14th century. It was built appropriately enough to keep out the Welsh hoards, jolly good thing too. It was given by Henry II to Robert FitzHardinge, Governor of Bristol (who was descended from the Kings of Demnark), with power to strengthen and enlarge it, in roughly 1150. Its proper job fortified with holes for boiling oil to be poured down, a natural moat and crenulations etc. There are those slit windows for arrows and also trick stairs when you first come in with steps designed at different heights to trip people up when running up them. Clever. It was breached once by Parliamentarians during the English civil war, given back to the family a while later under the instructions that the broached walls, which took 3 days for the Parliamentarians to destroy, would remain ruined so the castle would never again be such a strong and therefore dangerous fortress. However, other than that it’s still a complete castle which is pretty impressive.
It is here that Edward II, according to legend, was executed by having a red hot poker shoved up his arse in 1327. A weak and unpopular leader he was also widely believed to be gay, hence the poker. I won’t go into details about Edward as frankly it would all be off Wikipedia anyway which is something of a cheat but he married Isabella and at some point sent her off to France to sort out a diplomatic issue. Whilst there the neglected Isabella took a lover; Roger Mortimer and it is widely believed that on her return the 2 of them plotted to invade England. Somehow they managed this and to cut a long story short imprisoned Edward here in Berkeley castle. They take great delight in showing off the dungeon which leads from one of the upstairs rooms in the keep down to courtyard level. Usually prisoners would have just been thrown down the hole and left there to die, assuming the fall hadn’t killed them to begin w
ith. If that didn’t do it the household threw all their shit and animal carcasses etc in there in the hope that it would asphyxiate the poor old prisoner. Edward probably wasn’t thrown down the dungeon but installed in the room above, ready to be happily suffocated by the stench of rotting festering crap. He must have had a strong constitution though and alas it didn’t kill him. Isabella, wanting the guy to die of ‘natural causes’ left it for a while but eventually arranged to have him strangled in his bed by his jailors and alas the red hot poker story is almost certainly a myth. My mother use to take great, GREAT, delight in telling me his screams could be heard as far as Gloucester so she must have been very disappointed to hear it was all bollocks.
ith. If that didn’t do it the household threw all their shit and animal carcasses etc in there in the hope that it would asphyxiate the poor old prisoner. Edward probably wasn’t thrown down the dungeon but installed in the room above, ready to be happily suffocated by the stench of rotting festering crap. He must have had a strong constitution though and alas it didn’t kill him. Isabella, wanting the guy to die of ‘natural causes’ left it for a while but eventually arranged to have him strangled in his bed by his jailors and alas the red hot poker story is almost certainly a myth. My mother use to take great, GREAT, delight in telling me his screams could be heard as far as Gloucester so she must have been very disappointed to hear it was all bollocks. Other famous inhabitants of the castle include Sir Francis Drake who was good mates with the family and came to visit every time he was near by trying to find timber for his ships and also Elizabeth I stayed there at one point and shot all the Earls dear which apparently he wasn’t too pleased about. She turned up with her lover as well what an old whore. The bitterness between Elizabeth and the Berkeley family came to a head when the queen rode in the front gate with her entourage, Lord Berkeley rode out - a supreme insult.
The Berkeley family is very interesting indeed. I didn’t realise just how influential they were. For example; it was they, or rather a branch of them, who bought a great big house in London and, after a while, granted a large amount of their garden back to the city, or the crown or something, for a public square named, of course, Berkeley Square. This was sold off in 1919 for £2 million in order to restore the castle, probably a mistake I would have thought. One of the Berkeley’s was a philosopher and on his death had his significant library donated to Yale university with the understanding that it would be used to set up a new university on the West Coast which obviously, is now known as the University of California at… Berkeley!! I had never seen the connection as Americans always pronounce it bUUURRkley.
The castle is very lovely inside with some fabulous paintings, tapestries and furniture. Something that particularly took my fancy though was a chair/table/chest thing in one of the kitchens which would be terribly useful in my life as well as some beautiful Van de Velde ship paintings of the various ships under Berkeley command, it being a naval family. The family is also known to this day as being massively into hunting, the Berkeley hunt still takes place each year and they are famous for wearing yellow rather than the traditional red, or pinks or whatever it’s called. Horace Walpole, the subject of last weeks blog was also much taken by the place when he visited and bought several items. Anyway this has gone on for far too long and I have no doubt missed out all the most important things I saw oh well. It was a great day out though and an excellent venue for weddings which they clearly make most of their money out of. See you all next week!
