Hello all
Bit late with the blog this week due to the bank holiday and my birthday – yay! I went home for the weekend to see the parents and went to see the amazing Tyntesfield which is somewhere south-ish of Bristol, I don’t know where really! Anyway this property and its estate were unusually bought by the National Trust in 2001 rather than bequeathed with a dowry, which is usually the only way they will take anything. I’m not 100% certain of the situation but basically rather than letting it fall into the hands of private owners (Kylie was interested apparently!!) Bristol Council raised and gave a lot of money so the NT could buy it under the understanding that the house must be open during the restoration so visitors could go straight away rather than waiting 6 years and also see what it takes to restore and catalogue an amazing old house like this. When I went a few years ago they only had a few of the rooms open and some of the front was covered in scaffolding (apparently the biggest free standing scaffold structure in Europe) but that’s all done now and loads more of the house is open looking amazing and they have a fancy visitor centre with a rather excellent second hand book shop. (I bought The Prime of Miss Jane Brodie by Muriel Spark and The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos for a pound each in case you’re interested!!!).
Anyway, Tyntesfield is an incredible Victorian Gothic masterpiece of a house. As befits its glorious optimism and pretention it was built by the Gibbs family who were self made millionaires, apparently at one point the richest non titled family in England. Even more appropriately their money was mostly made through shit, literally shit – or guano which was popular form of fertiliser made out of bird poo. Hahahaha. Anyway one mans shit is another mans fortune and these guys were seriously loaded – according to the NT website the £70,000 cost of building Tyntesfield - which started in 1863 - represented less than one year's average profits for their firm. It seems money was no object and they could indulge themselves in any architectural whim and decorative fancy they liked including an aviary in the garden built to look like a wendy house which was later converted into an actual play house for the children/grandchildren of the family. The building was designed originally by the architect John Norton with turrets, gables, pointy windows – the whole shebang. The inside is as elaborate, if not more so, than the outside with every surface covered in the most beautiful wallpaper, carvings over every section of wood and ceiling and my particular delight a huge number of tiles, everywhere, my favourite!! These include beautiful tiled gazebos in the garden as well as an amazing tiled roof – every element was patterned and rich, it kind of reminds me of St Chappell in terms of a jewel box of colour, pattern and texture. Its all just SO ARTS AND CRAFTS – it’s amazing!! I lusted after the beautiful Morris-style soft furnishings. Totally gorgeous.
The family, or part of it at some point anyway, were very religious and subscribed to the Oxford movement i.e. high Anglicanism. They had the architect Arthur William Blomfield design a separate chapel in the 1870s which is linked to the house by a stained glass passage. The local church apparently disapproved and consequently the chapel was never consecrated which is a great shame as my god that would be a good wedding venue. I guess they may still be able to hire it out for non religious ceremonies and you could use one of the beautiful rooms in the estate for the reception or something – god it would be AMAZING. The interior is beautiful with the usual gorgeous tiles and amazing sparkly mosaics etc. It looks so spooky hanging above the house on the hill, this place will surely soon be appearing in multiple BBC costume dramas – it would make an excellent Northanger Abbey amongst other things. What’s really great about Tyntesfield though is not just that they have gone out of their way to acquire and restore the place, it’s also the way they do it. Amongst the ornately carved side boards., marble fireplaces and multicoloured floor tiles we have the old school 1980s TV belonging to the last old gent of the Gibbs family who lived here all alone until his death in 2001 when the place went on the market. When you walk through the restored kitchens you see a pile of phone books from 2000/2001 which haven’t been moved since he lived there, occupying a few rooms of the house only. It’s somehow sad and also quite spooky – Miss Haversham-esque almost.
Earlier in the weekend I went to the British Museum in an attempt to look round the permanent collection, or some of it anyway. The BM has been doing some genuinely excellent exhibitions over the last couple of years which I have enjoyed mightily but it occurred to me recently I never, ever go to the main galleries to look at the stolen hoards of various nations we have invaded/colonised/massacred. I have been to look at the Elgin Marbles occasionally obviously and I went to look at some of the Islamic stuff a couple of years back and also I had to write about some ancient pot or other during my degree but I can not remember ever going to see the mummies for example, which seems crazy. Anyway off I toddled to be inspired by History only to flee to the peace and calm of the prints and drawings room after about half an hour because the rest of it became OVERUN with crowds of annoying tourists. Also to be honest once I have seen one big bit of marble I get horribly bored, I don’t like classicism that much and I have become so indoctrinated by exhibitions that I can’t cope with not having some definite narrative or theme. I need to learn about a particular subject THOROUGLY god damn it – how will I know what to Wikipedia when I get home otherwise?? There was just too much stuff it’s overwhelming. Although one day I will have an illicit romantic meeting in the mummy room god damn it one day I will.
Anyhoo we practically ran to the prints and drawings room and cowered there until it was time to go home but luckily they have had some great little shows on their recently and its always a joy. This time it was something to do with Australia. I’m not quite sure what this whole BM-Australia obsession is about at the mo but they do seem to be all antipodean-ed up, and why not I say. This show was therefore a bit of an overview of some of the prints to come out of Australia since the beginning of the 20th century, or something. There was some nice stuff in there in particular the work of Rick Amor, John Brack, Edwin Fabian and Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack. The exhibition talked a lot, especially at the beginning, about the gaining notoriety of aborigine artists and print makers but to be honest I thought that was a bit of PC PR wank as there were hardly any of them in the show from what I can tell. What I did find incredibly interesting was the background it gave to artists such as Fabian and Mack which gives an insight into a rather shameful chapter in 20th century British history. Both had fled Nazi Germany, where Mack had been a student at the Bauhaus, to England and were then, with the outbreak of war, put on the now infamous Dunera along with hundreds of other ‘enemy aliens’ and shipped off to Australia where they were kept in no doubt pretty unpleasant internment camps, I would assume until the war was over. I didn’t know that this happened or anything about the ‘Dunera boys’, many of whom were granted Australian citizenship and stayed. Some of their images of the camps are truly haunting.
I could go into a lot more detail about the show but frankly I cant be bothered as although enjoyable it wasn’t ALL THAT. So off I go for another week – bye!!
