Castle And Hall

We left Norwich, heading north to Lincolnshire, with a couple of stops planned along the way. The first of these was Castle Rising, near King’s Lynn. This is an old Norman castle, original built by William d’Aubigny in 1138, and gained fame as the place of Queen Isabella, the she-wolf of France. It has been owned and passed down by various families, including the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duke of Norfolk, before falling derelict for a while, being home to a lone lunatic (about whom I could find nothing on t'internet, but it was mentioned on one of the information panels), and finally restored in the 19^th century. The castle has never really featured as a military installation and was mostly used as a hunting lodge for the nearby deer park. The keep is now a ruin, but a very picturesque one, and we were able to ascend two storeys high via a spiral staircase, and see some of the rooms upstairs.

Our next stop was Oxburgh Hall, which is a stately home also near King’s Lynn – paradoxically closer to Norwich than Rising Castle, but the house doesn’t open until 11:00 so we decided to do them in reverse order. By the time we got there it was past noon so we got ourselves a cup of tea from the café and had our sammies in the open air, before going into the house to see all the things.

Built in the 15^th century for Sir Edmund Bedingfield, it is a moated house in the late medieval style. Four of the rooms are open to the public, so we toured those, talking to the guides along the way, and learning about Dutch embossed wallpaper and other such things. The Bedingfields were left-footers, so they were persecuted a bit under Elizabeth I, but they seemed to have survived it and then supported the Jacobean cause of the Young Pretender. There are many artefacts, paintings and tapestries on display, some fabulous wood carvings, and it’s all generally agreeable. Outside, the moat is covered in algae, which somewhat interfered with my attempts to take a reflection picture. Ah well.

Pictures of old dead dudes, and dudesses

 We had a two-hour drive to our digs in Lincolnshire, so we decided not to hang around any further and get on the road. The drive through Lincolnshire involves a lot of leafy lanes, as Linconshire is (a) one of the largest counties in England, and (b) has no motorways. We made our now-traditional stop-off at a supermarket (which we had to hurry to, as they close at 4 on Sundays! How quaint!) to re-victual, then did the final miles to our cottage, lent to us by a friend of Heide’s. We had a little difficulty locating it at first, as Heide had given us a slightly incorrect house number, but we found it eventually, and even found Hollywood parking right in front of the house. It’s lovely, a far cry from our previous digs, which were in the coal cellar of an old Victorian terrace in Norwich. Converted to a studio, I hasten to add!

We’re settled in here now and looking forward to exploring Lincolnshire over the next few days.