A Small Tour «

A Small Tour

Wednesday 21st July 2021

Harry Rollo’s perf was exterminated by an early outbreak of pinging before anyone had heard of pinging. Harry Rollo in advance of his time as always – but really so awful. Royston and I managed to carry on with the rest of our tour as planned. I’ve always wanted to see Burghley House so it was treated as en route for Norfolk where we were to stay with Herbert Morrison and St Anselm. You load into Burghley from the side after a massive trek all round its massive park. Therefore the full vista of the house, which is supposed to be a glorious Elizabeth fantasy of crazy chimney ideas is not on view. The inside tour is a rich suite of 17th century rooms got up to look like a Renaissance palace in Italy. In some of them the walls and ceilings are painted as one with heroic classical scenes swirling throughout – an incredible sight. I liked that there was good modern honey-beige carpet and a sense of the family still with money. Royston was recognised at once by the loyal attendants at least one of whom experienced an evident excitement in the presence. There was one outstanding Gainsborough and some ravishing floral bed-hangings restored. Just maybe after 20 or 30 such drawing rooms one was a little shattered. View from the windows tending towards pleasant. We were so long touring there was no time for the grounds and Royston felt it necessary to boost morale in the gift shop. On the whole there was only limited scope for input into the property such as we normally like to put in – suggesting which Trusts might help, how to get better signage on the public roads nearby and so on. They had apparently worked quite a lot of that out for themselves. I raced round to try and get the famous view of the building as a whole – oh dear! It looked like a girls’ school. Someone must have altered the windows in the 19th century.

We roared on to Herbert Morrison and St Anselm’s for the Welcome Dinner.