Cragside, UK Part I--The Gardens

Most estates have both formal and informal gardens. Some are made for people to stroll through leisurely, others to produce herbs and spices and fruit and veg, still others to impress the visitors with their opulence or their exotic items. Cragside did not disappoint in this case.

Cragside Gardens

Craigside was built by William George Armstrong, a scientist and industrialist in the 1800s. Originally, he planned it as a getaway nestled in the woods but soon it grew into a fabulous estate. His wife Margaret loved plants and carefully designed the gardens of Craigside to make them one of the finest Victorian gardens in England.

We visited the top terrace of the garden, which features a small clock tower. It was built in the 1860s and served both as the time keeper of the estate and as the pay office. The clock used two mechanisms. One kept the clock running for all to see. The other would toll the bell at various times to signal the start or end of shifts for workers and also meal times. The clock was built in the Gothic Revival style and was refurbished in 1992.

The clock tower

Detail of the tower

The middle terrace of the garden includes Armstrong's sundial, another clock in case the clock tower runs down.

Middle terrace lawn

Sundial

In between the clocks is an area that originally had many greenhouses for growing show plants. Some of the houses were taken down in the 1920s, leaving the tropical fernery in the open air. The fernery was probably J's favorite part of the gardens, since it still had the rock walls which made a small path or maze through which we all explored. I was also fascinated to find out that ferns were a common collectible for those wishing to be more upper-class. Middle-class homes would feature at least one fern if they could!

Tropical fernery

Exit hiding among the rocks

More leafy ferns

The fernery leads out onto a small pool that didn't have any fish we could see. It probably served to reflect light inside the greenhouse back in the day. Nearby a bed of flowers was becoming very fragrant (we visited in June).

Lilly-padded pond!

Flowers by the millions!

Greenhouses have been rebuilt just above the formal garden and the middle terrace. Down the hill were more gardens but we were getting hungry so we headed back to the estate stables where we would have a picnic lunch. More on that in the next post!

Greenhouse glass!

A spot to enjoy the view of the gardens below

St. John the Baptist Church, Knaresborough, UK

St. John the Baptist Church in Knaresborough is one of the oldest in the town. Its origins date back to 1114 when King Henry I put the original church under Nostell Priory. Scottish raiders reduced much of the church to ruin in 1318. Edward III's wife Phillipa was given the castle, town, forest, and honour of Knaresborough as a wedding gift and she financed rebuilding of the church. Most of the current building dates from the 1300s, though aisles were added 100 years later. The church still operates as a Church of England parish.

St. John the Baptist Church, Knaresborough

Other side of the church

Clearly a later addition

The graveyard outside seems sparsely populated for such an ancient church. Perhaps there's a story there.

L wonders why such an empty church graveyard

The entrance was inviting though the sign by it showed they were still participating in the local arts festival which had ended the day before our visit. That explains the odd decorations inside the church.

Church entrance

Seaside show means...

...seven odd boaters riding the pews

The rest of the church is quite nice though dark and sombre.

Nave

The church organ looks like it is floating on the left side of the main altar. It also is near one of those tombs that seem standard with churches dating back to the middle ages.

Organ over piano

Unidentified tomb, probably a cleric

The baptismal font has an elaborate ironwork for raising and lowering the lid.

Baptismal font with some more arty decorations

The stained glass is nice and appears to be from several periods. Unfortunately, the lighting was not cooperating with my camera, but I did enjoy the windows.

The sea theme was started long ago, apparently!

Jesus and two female disciples

Jesus separates goats and sheep

The high altar at the back is nice with a large window of Jesus and four apostles.

Main altar

The church is worth popping in if you happen to be visiting Knaresborough!

Movie Review: Jack Reacher (2012)

Jack Reacher (2012) directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Jack Reacher is based on the novel One Shot by Lee Child. It is part of a series of novels featuring Jack Reacher. They are all stand-alone adventures, not requiring knowledge of previous books for enjoyment. Reacher is an ex-military man drifting around America with the clothes on his back, a tooth brush, and an ATM card. He typically gets involved in some criminal activity when he runs into a victim who appeals to his sense of justice or a criminal who appalls his sense of justice. I've listened to three of the stories as audiobooks and found them exciting and enjoyable. But not One Shot. I was looking forward to a film version of the character, imagining Dwayne Johnson, aka the Rock, in the main role.

What Jack Reacher has is the more controversial casting choice of Tom Cruise. Certainly Cruise is a more bankable star, but Reacher is a taller, younger, and tougher character than the contemporary Cruise tough guy. Most fans of the novels groaned at the casting decision, but Hollywood runs on numbers, not on faithfulness to fan expectations. A related worry for fans was that the rest of the movie would be run by numbers rather than by the delightful craftsmanship found in the novels.

As for Cruise, I can see how people who haven't read the books would be satisfied with his performance. He does have the charisma and the toughness to deliver a great action character. He suggests the physicality through looks and voice quite well. I still wasn't fully satisfied, but Cruise performed well.

The story was interesting though moments of it fell into cliche. The overall conspiracy didn't quite hold together and the finale wound up showing too many recycled bits from 1980s action films. Not the good bits, either. The movie ran too much according to numbers than to good storytelling, resulting in a mediocre action picture. Which would be okay, if I didn't know the source material well enough to know how far short they fell from the mark.

Parental Advisory: Some foul language but not excessive; one thonged female rear end; lots of violence but not a lot of blood and gore; some intense scenes.

Movie Trailer

The Wall of Berwick-Upon-Tweed, England

The town of Berwick-Upon-Tweed is at the mouth of the river Tweed and has been a strategic location for a long time. Edward I built the first walls in the 1200s, which were strengthened by Robert the Bruce in 1318. Elizabeth I hired an Italian engineer to rebuild the walls from 1558 to 1569. They are still in fantastic shape and can easily be walked upon by visitors. The views are quite special.

Our hotel was not far from the walls and we were able to climb up and see the river easily.

View of river and family from the Elizabethan Ramparts

We followed the walls to the left, where we found a lot of buildings right on the walls. Someone was grilling and we could smell the delicious charcoal-cooked meat, even if we couldn't see it from above. We looked down from the wall and got a dirty look coming up at us! We worked our way around the walls to see the mouth of the Tweed spilling into the North Sea.

The lighthouse

More of the town across the low-tide bay

The walls snaking around the bay front

The Russian Gun is the only piece of artillery that we found on the walls. It points out to see, probably waiting for enemies to try to land.

The Russian Gun

Gun's-eye view

At the eastern end of the walls is King's Mount, a bastion with some of the old rooms still visible since the roofs fell in. Bastions were heavily fortified corners of the defensive walls, often housing the soldiers who guarded the town.

Wall path to King's Mount

Former military rooms

Over on the other side of town, we found a statue to Lady Jerningham. She was a much beloved local philanthropist. Her husband, the politician Sir Hubert Jerningham, erected the statue in her honor in 1902.

Lady Jerningham

The walls do make a complete circuit around the town but we did not walk the whole way. As usual, the children wanted to have a snack, necessitating a descent into the town for a treat. We didn't complain since we were hungry too!

Berwick-Upon-Tweed, England

Berwick-Upon-Tweed has a very interesting history. It is near the border between Scotland and England and it changed hands fourteen times before England made the final conquest in 1482. The town still hadn't settled down, though, because in the 16th century it was declared a "free burgh," i.e. part of neither Scotland nor England. When Queen Victoria declared war on Russia in 1853, she did it as "Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed, and all the British Dominions." The peace treaty of 1856 failed to mention Berwick-upon-Tweed, thus they were still officially at war with Russia until 1966, when a Soviet official visited the town and signed a treaty. The Berwick mayor said something to the effect that the Russians could at last sleep easy in their beds.

View into Berwick-upon-Tweed from the town walls

The Town Hall and its clock tower are sometimes mistaken for a church. The hall served the usual purposes for a town. The ground level was a market (now it is shops, so nothing has really changed). The upper levels were civic rooms and the town jail, all of which are now tourist-oriented museums.

Marygate view to the town hall in the distance

The town has three bridges that connect it across the River Tweed to the Spittal area. The oldest is Berwick Bridge finished in 1626. It has fifteen arches and is used for car traffic.

Berwick Bridge

The newest bridge is the Royal Tweed Bridge, built in 1928, also conveying cars.

Royal Tweed Bridge

The highest bridge is the Royal Border Bridge. It is 126 feet high and has 28 arches. It is a railway bridge. We occasionally saw trains up there but weren't fast enough to photograph them.

Royal Border Bridge

The river Tweed feeds into the North Sea and is one of the best salmon rivers in England. Naturally a pub would take inspiration from this fact.

The Leaping Salmon, Berwick-upon-Tweed

We stayed at the Dewar's Lane Granary, which is now a youth hostel. It has more of a lean than the Leaning Tower of Pisa but is perfectly safe inside.

Dewar's Lane Granary (looks okay from this angle)

Alley leading to the hotel, where you can see more of the slant

The stairwell wasn't quite finished

Walking around town we found a huge allotment (that's a set of garden plots for you American readers) inside the city walls right nearby a not so welcoming house.

Garden allotments

Lions' Gate?

We also saw the Main Guard, which was built in the early 1700s and has become a museum about life in Berwick over the centuries. It wasn't open when we visited, so we didn't get to learn about life here.

Main Guard, Berwick

Pretty soon we couldn't resist the urge to walk on the walls, which will be our next post!

Doorway through (and into) the walls