We woke this morning to a beautiful day of English liquid sunshine. And that more or less decided our activities for the day (no long outdoor walks today!).
We took our time getting started, nothing touristy here opens much before 10 or 11am. We left our BnB, ”The Old School House”, and headed to Petworth, about a 30min drive away through the country side.
Every village you drive through has at least one really interesting old looking “thing” in it, be it an amazing old stone wall, old stone houses or old stone church. It makes every drive so much easier, there is always an interesting view.
We got to Petworth in good time and drove through the village to get to Petworth House. The village is very old, with narrow streets lined either side with vertical walls of houses and “walls”.
Petworth House and Park, and its amazing contents were bequeathed to the National Trust in 1947, although the family still stay in one wing of the house for periods through the year. The estate covers about 700 acres, and first came into the ownership of the Percy family in the 12th century. It has remained in the same family line ever since, surviving ownership through the English civil war through some very crafty politics by the family. The House has been transformed and grown through the centuries. The extensive art collection in the House is primarily the work of George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837). He was a lover of the arts and amongst other things a friend and patron of J.M.W.Turner the artist. Consequently there are a large number of Turner’s works in the house, including one oddity, a portraiture done by Turner while he was in Italy. It is suggested that this is the only portrait he did due to the deriding critique it was given by other prominent artists of the day (I think he went back to painting ships in very stormy seas – he was very good at that). There are works of many other famous artists all through the house, paintings, carvings, sculptures, frescos, murals, it just goes on. There is an original draft of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” on display as well as the oldest known surviving English made terrestrial globe by Emery Molyneux. The artworks within the house are truly amazing and a must to see if you’re around the area.
After exploring the house (unfortunately the servant tunnels under the house are closed on weekends and we didn’t get to see them), we set off to look around the grounds and to try and spot some of the deer that reside there. It took a little while but we did see some deer off in the distance. Recently they have allowed dogs to be taken onto the grounds, and there were quite a few being walked through the park, we think they may have spooked the deer away a bit.
After we left Petworth House we had lunch in a small cafe in the village. As we walked in my glasses steamed up, it was so warm and humid in there. We both had a Bacon and Stilton panini, quite nice really.
From Petworth we drove to Arundel and had a look through The Arundel Cathedral, a very impressive building that was built from 1869 to 1873 by Henry 15th Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshall. The cathedral holds the remains of Saint Philip Howard, the 20th Earl of Arundel who was canonised in 1970. The Cathedral is a Gothic Revival style, and very minimalistic. It does have a large rose type stained glass window at one end that has the cathedrals organ pipes under it. A beautiful setting. While we were there, they were beginning to prepare for a Corpus Christi ceremony next week. As part of it they make a carpet of flowers down the centre aisle of the Cathedral. Going by pictures of previous years, the flower carpet has a lot of patterns in it. So many boxes of flowers were delivered!
Next we walked across the road and down the hill a bit to the St Nicholas church. The church dated back to the 14th century, and had a peculiarity of having two different uses, the nave and the transepts are used as a chapel, while the chancel is used as a funerary. The chapel is open to the public but the funerary appears only to have access through the Priory. The inside of the chapel was reserved and peaceful, it felt comfortable and peaceful. A man was practicing piano while we were there, very nice. We walked around the back of the chapel to try to get a look into the funerary, and at the end of the path was a life size sculpture of Jesus on the cross with a crying woman either side of him, something neither of us expected to see. We couldn’t find a way in, and had to be satisfied with a look over a stone wall at the building.
Arundel Castle was next door to the Cathedral and Church, but we decided not to go in, it was too late in the day.
We then drove back to Chichester to relax a little before dinner
Earlier in the day we had considered taking a drive to Hambledon Cricket Club, said to be the “cradle of cricket”, the place where the laws of cricket were first made/written, and also the place where the 3rd stump was added. But since a bit of research revealed they had moved from the original ground where all the history had been made, we decided against the drive. But in this year of the Cricket World Cup it was an interesting aside to our travels.
