Category: history

Wise to save a folly: Dinton Castle reborn

Tonight’s edition of Grand Designs (Wed 19 Sep, 9.00pm, Channel 4), presented by the ever-affable Kevin McCloud, followed the progress of an architectural project with a difference. A few miles south-west of Aylesbury, set back from the road to Thame, stands a strange octagonal building, Dinton Castle (also known as Dinton Folly). The Grade II listed structure is over 250 years old; Sir John Vanhatten built it as an eyecatcher from nearby Dinton Hall. He also stored his fossil collection in the limestone walls.

However, Dinton Castle has become increasingly precarious in recent years, until its purchase in 2016. Its subsequent restoration, and conversion into a two-bedroom family home, is the work of architect Jaime Fernandez. You can find out more about the project here. Congratulations to Jaime on creating a new purpose for one of the Vale of Aylesbury’s most distinctive architectural landmarks. Thomas Gray wrote that “where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise”; in this case, clearly it was wise not to abandon a folly to its fate.

Photo: Rob Farrow (reproduced under Creative Commons Licence)

The many names of Christmas

Just over a mile up the hill from Watlington lies the hamlet of Christmas Common. But there doesn’t seem to be settled agreement on the reason for the name…

One theory is that the name derives from the Christmas trees that grow here. The Tree Barn, a local business, was involved in the decoration of the Christmas tree outside 10 Downing Street in 2017.  A second possibility is that a family called Christmas lived in the area.

The third possible source for the name is the local truce which is supposed to have been declared between the rival troops in the English Civil War on Christmas Day in 1643 (an echo of the legend of the football match between British and German soldiers in the trenches around Ypres on Christmas Day, 1914). The Civil War certainly passed close by. Six months beforehand, in June 1643, John Hampden sustained a fatal wound at the Battle of Chalgrove. Another local legend has it that he stayed at the Hare and Hounds in Watlington the night before, leaving a chest containing money for the payment of troops with the landlord.  The Hare and Hounds stood till 1990; in its place now is the rather more prosaically named Chiltern Business Centre.

Whatever the truth may be, Christmas Common is popular these days with cyclists and walkers alike. There’s any number of walking routes you can follow, or adapt for yourself, through ancient woodland filled with beech, yew, sycamore and other trees – even the occasional cherry tree – and across chalk grassland rich in wild flowers. If a bit of steepness doesn’t faze you, that’s even better. We climbed almost 400 feet (138m) for some wonderful views across south Oxfordshire – taking care not to disturb the cows (above). If you need sustenance at the start, end or mid-point of your route, the Fox and Hounds is a lovely old country pub, where George the amiable Labrador pads around while you enjoy local sausages and mash or one of the chef’s excellent pies.

Mad women, triple poisoners and parallel world portal: High Wycombe

How much money, including visitor income, did John Betjeman cost Slough when his poetry when his poetry called for ‘friendly bombs’ to fall on the town? It’s impossible to know, although the local authority and others who promote Slough have been known to express some exasperation about the effect on the town’s reputation.

No poet has been quite so cruel to High Wycombe, but it has a long, unwanted track record of cultural references which make it out to be dull, dreary or even just a bit of a joke. For example…

“This is about as much fun as a wet weekend in High Wycombe…”
(Yootha Joyce in George and Mildred, the film of the ITV sitcom, 1980)

“I’m living in High Wycombe with a madwoman!”
(Tim Brooke-Taylor in You Must Be the Husband, BBC sitcom, 1990s)

“High Wycombe is the last place on Earth, or should I say in the universe, where anything unusual is ever going to happen.”
(The Doctor in short story ‘Return of the Spiders’ from Doctor Who: More Short Trips, 1999 – the story featured giant man-eating spiders)

JOHN: “Do you go for a discreet Harvester sometimes [with Irene Adler]? Is there a night of passion in High Wycombe… Just text her back… Because High Wycombe is better than you are currently equipped to understand.”
SHERLOCK: “I caught a triple poisoner in High Wycombe.”
(‘The Lying Detective’, Sherlock, 2016)

Steve Coogan’s tragi-comic creation Alan Partridge referred to a night of passion in the town’s (fictional) Queen’s Moat Hotel while, in his comic novel In Your Dreams, Tom Holt made High Wycombe an unlikely portal to the land of the Fey.  Even The Archers has made not particularly flattering reference to the town not so long ago.

As it happens, some encouraging developments have been afoot in Wycombe in recent years; a new shopping centre, a new bus station, university status for the local college and an excellent theatre, the Wycombe Swan. And – if you’re ready to look for it – there is much of interest to find, for example at the Wycombe Museum (pictured above).

There isn’t a Harvester in the town, though there is one just outside, at Handy Cross. Maybe all those deerstalker-wearing fans of Benedict Cumberbatch will be paying it a visit soon, hoping for a glimpse of the Great Detective.

Classic, vintage and the need for speed

Earlier this year we visited an Oxfordshire barn with the secrets of Aston Martin inside. If you’re a petrolhead, or even if you just enjoy looking at classic and vintage cars, then the Chilterns is an excellent place to be.

There are many good reasons for visiting Stonor Park in Oxfordshire. This year saw something new, a Supercar Sunday featuring everything from pioneering race cars to classic cars and the latest hypercars. The event, which ran in May in support of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Children’s Fund, was a terrific success (thanks to Stonor Park for providing the photo above).  Plans are afoot to repeat the event in 2019, so keep an eye on the Stonor website for news of that.

Meanwhile, several other local events with a motoring theme are coming up:-

All three promise to be fun days out with plenty of motoring power to admire…

Raising the Devil

A sunny Sunday morning in June is the perfect time for a walk in the  countryside.  Conjuring up the devil is a less common pastime, I hope, but I had the opportunity to combine both. Our walk from Oving to North Marston started in the usual way, strolling across fields with views over the countryside, whilst avoiding cow pats and  murmuring ‘mint sauce’ to the sheep as we passed.

On arrival in North Marston, however, we came across the village pump and Schorne Well.  John Schorne was rector of North Marston from 1282 to 1314. After his death, the church became a popular pilgrimage site because of his holiness and the miracles supposed to have been worked by the power of the water in his Holy Well, which was supposed to cure gout.  In the church itself is a ‘boot shrine’ where afflicted pilgrims could insert their feet in hope of a cure. The popularity of the shrine brought huge prosperity to the church, as the impressive building will testify. In 1478, Edward IV had Schorne’s relics transferred to the newly-build St George’s Chapel at Windsor in the hope of attracting the pilgrim trade, but visitors still continued to visit the Holy Well; Henry VIII (commonly believed to have been a gout sufferer) went twice.

Over time, images of the cure for gout, which was represented by the devil being drawn out of a boot, became misunderstood as Schorne conjuring the devil in a boot, giving rise to the local jingle ‘John Schorne, gentleman borne, conjured the devil into a boot.’

Sadly, the well was sealed off in 1861 after a tragic accident and by 1900 the building that  housed it had fallen down, with only the pump remaining. This sorry state of affairs continued for the next century, but in 2005, a new well-house was built, with an amusing reference to the legend. If you pump hard enough, you can see the devil’s head pop up in the boot beside the water trough.

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The cows have come home…?

When you’re wandering round an Oxfordshire town centre in 2018, there are certain things you don’t expect.  Such as random sightings of replica cows.  Milton Keynes, maybe; it has a reputation for concrete bovines.  But we saw a few as we pottered around Thame today.

Perhaps it’s no more than a useful reminder that Thame has been a market town for almost a millennium, and that the upper end of its high street was once occupied by a livestock market, with cattle and pigs penned into an area now marked by cobbles.  That would certainly help to explain the wide High Street and market place, with narrow entrances at both ends.  There still is a cattle market each Wednesday and Friday, along with a general market each Tuesday and a farmers’ market on the second Tuesday of each month.

Conservation efforts over many years have ensured that many other traces of the town’s history remain for visitors to find.  There’s the 15th century Nag’s Head, which used to be called the King’s Head… till a supporter of Charles I was hanged from the sign by Parliamentary soldiers during the Civil War.  Further along the High Street, by the corner with Church Road, the timber frame alms houses, founded in 1447 by Richard Quartermain, are almost trumped by the elaborate 19th century bandstand in the grounds.  Or there’s the Swan Hotel, whose Georgian facade belies the timber frame jettied construction inside, or the James Figg pub on Cornmarket, named after the world’s first boxing champion, who grew up in the town; or the plaque on Hampden House commemorating the heroism of John Hampden in the Civil War – he went to school in Thame, and died in Hampden House after sustaining injuries in battle in 1643.  And there are buildings with links to Evelyn Waugh and WB Yeats.

All in all, Thame is an excellent place to wander around for a day. A host of cafes can refresh you, and we thoroughly recommend The Thatch for lunch.  Maybe best to avoid the slow-braised beef brisket, though… just in case you catch a cow’s eye on your way back up the high street.

The show must go on? The Silver Caesars mystery

There’s always plenty to see at Waddesdon Manor, perhaps the most famous Rothschild house in Britain. At the moment, in addition to the many and various splendours on show all year round, there’s a special exhibition about the Aldobrandini Tazze, a collection of twelve standing cups which depict the lives of various Caesars of ancient Rome.

Each standing cup or tazza comprises a statuette of a Caesar, with four episodes from his life, based on The Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius (born c.70AD).  The narratives are almost wholly positive, in praise of the Caesars – though the Nero tazza shows him singing despite an earthquake and a fire, a version of the old saw about “fiddling while Rome burnt”.  Perhaps the creators thought this scene depicted a virtuous devotion to the arts – or maybe it was an early example of “The show must go on”…

More conventionally, the four scenes on the tazza for Vespasian (pictured above) show him putting an end to the rebellion in Judaea in AD 67-68; receiving a stray dog (who has brought him a human hand – how thoughtful) and an ox who bows to him while he is breakfasting; miraculously curing a blind man and a lame man; and returning to Rome in triumphal procession in AD 71 after military victory over the Jews.

At least five of the tazze entered various Rothschild collections, although their collective presence in this exhibition is the first example of all twelve being together on public display for over 150 years.  But the real mystery is this: who made them, when, where, for whom and for what purpose?  The Waddesdon exhibition suggests a hypothesis relating to a late 16th century Roman cardinal, Pietro Aldobrandini, and the Habsburg prince Archduke Albert VII of Austria. You’ll have to visit the exhibition, which is on until 22 July, to find out more. Whatever the answer to the mystery, the Silver Caesars together are a magnificent example of Renaissance art.