Every historic building has a story to tell
One of my favorite stories from my time spent in London during college was the day I was almost hit by a bus. Not that I relish the adrenaline rush of narrowly avoiding death from such an ignoble source, but that it was me hitting the bus, rather than the other way around. I was (read more)
Categories: Geffrye Museum, The Displaced Nation
Just in case anyone DOES look at this blog besides my dearest and nearest, and you don’t already arrive here from Smitten by Britain – you can find more stories of England, written by yours truly, here! My talents as a writer do not extend to composing blog posts as I am shepherded to three (read more)
Category: Uncategorized
I grew up in a country house. To be more accurate, I grew up in a house in the country, as my family doesn’t have an urban townhouse to which we decamp for most of the year. Instead, I spent the first 18 years of life on a farm in the Outer Bluegrass of Kentucky, (read more)
Categories: Bluegrass, Country house, England
Tags: Attingham Summer School, Attingham Trust, English Country Houses
Growing up, I spent a good deal of time visiting cemeteries and graveyards, both those established sites with their neat rows of markers and stones, and the wild, neglected and mostly forgotten spots scattered across my family farm. I never found them spooky or macabre – they were just another element of the landscape. (And (read more)
Category: Kentucky
Tags: Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, cemeteries, Memorial Day, Tower of London, World War I
I went back to my first garden a few weeks ago, and over the span of a few hot, sweaty hours, finally said my goodbyes. The exertion of taming a landscape I had shaped and formed and had been absent from for three years kept any emotions at bay until long after the sun set (read more)
I was not a tea drinker until my junior year of college. Through genetics, I’ve been lucky (or cursed?) to be fairly energetic most of the time, so a need for caffeine wasn’t established – and even then, when I first embarked on my tea journey, it wasn’t because I needed a stimulant – I (read more)
Tags: Fortnum & Mason, tea
Regent’s Park, established around 1811, covers 410 acres in the north central London. It is, by far, my very favorite park in London. Before Henry VIII’s seizure and subsequent dissolution of the monasteries, the land belonged to Barking Abbey (a wonderful name). Alas, the monk’s fertile farmland became a hunting park, later transformed by architect (read more)
Years ago, I read an article in Smithsonian Magazine about hiking Hadrian’s Wall, and while I am not typically a mad hiker, the images and the idea lingered.* Since England can’t seem to shake its heat wave this summer, going north sounded…cool. Refreshing. Hadrian’s Wall promised lilting breezes and a spring-like clime…Also, walking for miles (read more)
Categories: England, English Heritage, Hadrian's Wall
Tags: #hadrianswall, England
My travels about the English countryside have provided an unparalleled opportunity to see entrancing landscapes, incredible architecture, meet wonderful people, and inevitably, to be stranded after missing yet another bus. So it was with some optimistic cheer I planned an easy, relaxing jaunt on a warm Sunday afternoon to the Vyne near Oxford with my (read more)
Categories: Country house, England, National Trust
Tags: Henry VIII, Jane Austen, The Vyne, Tormore School
Much more learned individuals than me have voiced the idiom that one is always learning, and the condition of that journey is the continual discovery of how very little you actually know. And I know next to nothing about medieval houses, which is fairly understandable given that the most historic of our architecture is late (read more)
Category: England
Tags: Architecture, Chalgrove, English villages
Interested in a specific topic? Check out some popular categories below, or enter your search terms in the box.