Continuing on from Part II.
Next up on Thursday the 19th was York Castle Museum, 'the best day out in history'. The museum is best known for its recreated Victorian street, Kirkgate. It is the oldest recreated street in Britain (c. 1938) and apparently pioneered this visitor experience which is now used by thousands of museums worldwide. The street is named for Dr. John Kirk who desired to create a museum of everyday life and even rescued Victorian shop fronts. I was skeptical at first, having been at many such things before, more wary of the wooden 'lifelike' figures with their dated, badly applied make-up and flaking skin paint. However, I quickly revised that opinion because it was executed very well. There was little to none recordings of horses hooves on the cobblestones or market sellers hawking their wares in cockney accents. The window displays were magnificent, museum displays in their own right. I only wish my camera could take better pictures because I'd love to show some to you.
Hannah in the 1890s schoolroom.
Other parts of the museum celebrated themes of life - birth, marriage and death. There was also a current exhibition on about cleanliness throughout the nineteenth century to present day.
Two nineteenth-century wedding dresses, I'm sorry I can't be more specific, I can't find my notes.
I love seeing how styles of dress change over time and according to social/economic conditions of the time. Did you know that Queen Victoria was the first aristocrat to wear white for her wedding dress? Up until then wedding dresses were dyed (so that they could be worn again and also as a display of wealth). Dye was expensive and so only peasants and poorer classes wore white on their wedding day. The connotations of colour are powerful. White suggesting humility and a certain naivety, which applies less in our age - where white or cream are popular choices for wedding gowns because its an impractical colour to wear in every day life and we can't afford the dry cleaning bill - that's luxury for you.
Having dabbled in some museum studies this year, I have to say that my eye is now trained to notice methods of display and labeling of exhibits. We've even debated the use of mannequins, life-like/face/no face? I think that the mannequins used at York Castle Museums to display their costume collection are possibly some of the best I've seen. I love how they've used swatches of material to convey the effect of hair, and only the vaguest suggestion of facial features.
Then onto Leeds and its art gallery! An uexpected surprise, a beautiful spacious gallery. I loved the layout and colour schemes (trumping neutral, inoffensive white for brash blues, who knew that'd work so well?) The paintings they hold in their collection is impressive.
Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1894.
The colours, textures, composition! Oh this was bewitching in person!
Arthur Hacker, The Temptation of Sir Percival, 1894.
Evelyn de Morgan, The Valley of Shadows, 1899.
Francis Bacon, Head VI, 1949.
Percy Wyndham Lewis, Praxitella, 1921.
The Leeds Art Gallery café was equally as impressive, gorgeous mosaics everywhere, reminiscent of a nineteenth-century tea room. I had courgette and lime cake, that I throughly enjoyed. Unfortunately the only thing that out a damper on this particular visit was our struggle to find the shop which was inconveniently located somewhere near the rear of the building and had closed by the time we had found it at twenty to five. Which seems such an odd time to close. No lovely postcards for me on this trip.
That evening we got back and ate great Thai at The Old Siam, which was consistently busy, always a good sign! Afterward we went on a terrible ghost tour of York. Word of warning - if you're doing a ghost tour in York, avoid the one that meets outside York Minster. We encountered some hauntings of our own later on, courtesy of an eerie pub toilet. We did get to walk amongst the Shambles though which was lovely in itself.
Friday was our last day, and we made one final excursion, along the City Walls, to the York Art Gallery. The highlight of which you see below, along with 'Goodbye to all That' by Stanley Spencer.
David Hockney, Bigger Trees Near Warter (Or/Ou Peinture Sur Le Motif Pour Le Nouvel Age Post-Photographique), 2007.
Funnily enough, I preferred its postcard reproduction. Still not sure how I feel about this. It is eerie to look at.
York train station was large, clean but still retained a Victorian character. The rush of going traveling to all parts of the country, trains coming and going.
From May 17th - 20th, a handful of classmates and myself visited York.
On Tuesday we had a guided tour of Fairfax House, Castlegate. Fairfax House is a Georgian town house displaying one of the finest collections of English eighteenth-century furniture to be found anywhere. Fairfax House was built in 1762 to provide a residence for the Fairfax family during York's winter social season of events, balls and assemblies. It was St. George's Cinema and Dancehall in 1919, and was used until the late 70s, whereupon it soon fell into disrepair. In 1982 the York Civic Trust stepped in to save this important building and mount a major restoration project. It was opened to the public in 1984.
Afterward we made a sojourn to the York Assembly Rooms, stopping on the way for some alcoholic refreshment in a pub, where most of the clientele were under the influence, at 5pm! Guess we must have wandered off the tourist trail!
The Assembly Rooms are in wonderfully preserved condition (restored in 1952), now serving as a home to an Italian chain of restaurants. As you've seen in many an Austen adaption, assembly rooms were where the whose who of the town gathered during the social season. In the eighteenth-century, dances and card playing were held here, the ideal place to hob knob. Which is exactly what we did. I had a delish dish of butternut squash and mascarpone ravioli whilst we admired the columns and chandeliers over glasses of vino.
Wednesday came and there was our day trip to Castle Howard. I've never met anybody so helpful as people from Yorkshire, if it wasn't for a Marks & Spencer security guard we would have missed our bus to Castle Howard.
That night we crowded into one of our massive hotel rooms and watched The Apprentice, resting up for the long day ahead.
Thursday was the busiest day, we crowded so much in. First stop in the morning was York Minster cathedral. One of the largest Gothic cathedrals in Northern Europe, there has been a church on its present site from the seventh century onward. It was a Catholic cathedral until the Reformation of the fifteenth-century. A gloriously imposing building, it really is the jewel in York's crown. Seeing buildings like this fills me with awe, that once we were a people who built massive structures like this to reach toward heaven and our idea of God.
West window. Some of the stained glass windows (not this window) contain glass that dates from the medieval period and each window is on a cleaning rotation of 80 years, where the window is taken apart and cleaned.
Part of the choir screen.
I always find it difficult taking pictures within large churches and monumental buildings because you are taking a small fragment of the whole, and its more about the unifying experience of each element that makes up the wonder, rather than singular aesthetic elements.
Second visit of the day was to the Treasurer's House.
The purpose of visiting this house was to think about collections and collectors. Now owned by the National Trust, this historic house served as the home of treasurers of York Minster in the sixteenth-century. A wealthy York industrialist, Philip Green restored the house from 1897-1930. He redesigned each room in the style of a certain period. The picture above is the Medieval Great Hall. Of course, interior decoration of the nineteenth-century was preoccupied with revivalism of all sorts, the medieval and Gothic styles being the most favoured.
This was probably my least favourite of the attractions we visited while in York. Some of the restored furnishings and particular the wallpaper seemed a bit sloppily done. I really didn't get a feel for why Frank Green decorated a room in a certain way, theres also an apparently haunted cellar, that we were too rushed to visit, I wonder how this fitted into the scope of the house. There was an invigilator in each room and I couldn't help but feel they must be bored to tears. There was nothing stimulating about this visit, to me. The view of York Minster from the lovely sunken garden was the only redeeming factor for me. Location, location, location.
Its nigh on a month since I last updated. What with exams, trips, et cetera I haven't found the time or energy to post.
A couple of weeks ago, I went with a few classmates to York, a beautiful Georgian town in Yorkshire. We visited Fairfax House, Castle Howard, the Leeds Art Gallery, York Castle Museum (that pioneered reproduction historical streets within a museum context) and the York Art Gallery.
I gave a presentation on Castle Howard in my undergraduate degree and my familiarity with Brideshead Revisited means that Castle Howard holds a special interest for me.
Castle Howard was designed by the playwright turned architect John Vanburgh (who famously also designed Blenheim Palace) and is remarkable for its central dome that adds majesty and theatrically to what would be otherwise a symmetrical house. Construction began on the house c. 1700, Vanburgh was commissioned to design the house by the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, Charles Howard (1669 - 1738). The House is still occupied Simon Howard who lives there with his wife and two young children. It is also a private enterprise, with garden produce sold and utilizing the house and gardens as a visitor attraction and venue for weddings. Many privately owned country houses operate on the same system, having to make money to keep the estate running in the twenty-first century.
Grand Staircase and China Landing, constructed in the 1870s. This is where (paying) visitors enter the house, this part of the house dates from the nineteenth century, this wing was added as had been intended in Vanburgh's plans. Contains portraits of family members.
The China cabinet houses over 300 pieces of china, mostly Meissen, Sévre and Chelsea.
Lady Georgiana's bedroom. Georgiana was the sixth Countess of Carlisle, born Cavidenish, the 1801 marriage between her and George Howard, the 6th Earl, formed a connection between Castle Howard and Chatsworth House that lasted throughout the nineteenth century.
Furniture and decorative schemes from the dressing room adjacent to Georgiana's bedroom.
Bedroom containing the oldest piece of furniture in the house, a fifteenth century English made cabinet. Is this the bedroom that Laurence Olivier performed the death scene of Lord Flyte? I think the bedroom was called Victoria's Bedroom/The Queen's bedroom but it is not named as such in the guidebook so I'm not sure. Quite exciting to think that Olivier lay in that bed though.
The Antique passage did not assume its original form until the West Wing was built and finally decorated at the beginning of the 19th century. The majority of the busts in this gallery are antique, collected by the 4th Earl during his trips to Italy in 1738-9. It is a marvelous gallery to walk down, preparing you for the drama of the Great Hall and Vanburgh's dome.
The interior of the dome (which rises 70 feet above the house and lends Castle Howard its unique silhouette). Original decoration by Antonio Pellegrini, executed between 1709 and 1712, depicting the four elements and the tale of Phaeton falling from his father's chariot. Sadly destroyed by fire in November 1940. Repainted in 1962, my friends and I were on the shelf about the repainting, sorry that you can't see it very well here.
Casualties of the 1940 fire still remain.
The turquoise drawing room, contains paintings by Gainsborough and Reynolds. Gainsborough's portrait of Isabella Byron (great aunt to the poet) is just cut off at the top of my photo. At the beginning of the nineteenth century this room contained Old Masters paintings and contemporary artwork. John Jackson's 'Lady Mary Howard' (1828) can be seen in the centre.
The Long Gallery is 160 feet in length, it contains a wonderful Rubens painting of Salomé with the head of St. John the Baptist which my camera proved useless to capture.
Morris & Co. screen, in the chapel. 'The Legend of Good Women', derived from Chaucer's poem. Worked by Jane Morris and her sister Bessie Burden. An interesting article here on the commission.
Me sitting at the iconic Atlas fountain, sadly not running at the moment due to plumbing damage caused by three hard, cold winters.
Temple of the Four Winds, a folly in the grounds of Castle Howard.
Unfortunately I didn't get to the Mausoleum, you have to book ahead to get a private tour. It is interesting as its interior is an imitation of the Parthenon ceiling. Designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, begun in 1731. Generations of the Howard family have been buried in the crypt beneath.
The exhibition taking place when I was visiting is of the paintings and sketchbooks of George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle (1843-1911). I thought it was a nice addition to the house overall. I loved how the sketchbooks were displayed in an unordered haphazard fashion within the cases, no elaborate explanation needed.
This was incredible, George Howard elaborately decorated the envelopes of letters he sent to friends. Imagine this dropping through your letter box! For a stationary fiend like myself I really loved this little exhibit. It added a tangible personal element to the house, reminding you that it was foremost a family home, inhabited by generations of Howards with varying interests.
To conclude then, it was a thrill to finally see the house. The only gripe I have with the experience is that there is too much focus on Brideshead Revisited and Castle Howard's setting in the tv series and (terrible) movie. I understand that some of the rooms damaged in the 1940 fire still have not been restored yet I feel they could be put to better use rather than three rooms dedicated to Brideshead Revisited, especially the one that just details what the story is about. They have one room that was used as a set for the film, Lord Flyte's death scene, still preserved. I thought that was totally irrelevant, surely the tv series if anything is more iconic than the film. I also wish that there had been the option of a house tour by a guide, because I would really loved to have known about the interiors and furnishings.
