Postcards from the North

I remember everything.....

The Queen's Arms, Litton

I've been down this road before.....

And I have used this song, by John Prine and Pat McLaughlin, before, but it's true, and it's good, and it fits.....

I have been down these roads before, but I don't tire of that, there's always something new; the light is always different, as is the mood.....

Littondale

Almost ten years ago I was in Hubberholme, where in 1934 J B Priestley wrote that, Once up there you seem at first at the world's end; and indeed you are a long way from anywhere....

Inside the church the Buckden Knit and Natter Group show their take on the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales; Priestley's ashes would approve: 

Over the hills, we stop to admire the Aysgarth Falls, where the River Ure careers down into Wensleydale.....

And then we drive on to explore Bishop Auckland, whose castle was the home of the Bishops of Durham, though after the closure of the coal mines the town went into a decline. The castle re-opened on November 2nd, 2019, after renovations by the Auckland Project; the founding partner of the group being the owner of the castle, Jonathan Ruffer, who purchased the property and all of the contents in 2012, including the artwork by Francisco de Zurbarán.....

Zurbarán's paintings of Jacob and his twelve sons adorn the walls of the Dining Room (though two are currently on show - until August 23rd - in the National Gallery in London):

Also in the palatial complex there is a brand new Faith Museum (A unique museum exploring 6,000 years of British history through the lens of faith).....

And then, in the Market Place, apart from the Mining Art Gallery, we find the Spanish Gallery (The UK’s first gallery dedicated to the art and culture of the Spanish Golden Age).....

Here there are copies of El Grecos:

And explorations of Velasquez:

I have to say, however, that, though the aim is to make the town a significant tourist attraction, it is all a little over-whelming, and it may not surprise you that Wetherspoon's The Stanley Jefferson, also in the Market Place, seems to be more popular on a Saturday afternoon than either the Castle or the Spanish Gallery.....

Anyway, it was an experience, and we have an appointment with Music in Country Churches at the Church of St Mary, Wycliffe.....

And then a dusky drive over the moors to stay with friends in Stanhope:

It's a blowy day on Sunday, but the rain holds off and we drive up to the northern edge of the Roman Empire, first at Vindolanda, an extensive settlement just south of Hadrian's Wall, built originally to service the Stanegate Road (pretty much between modern Newcastle and Carlisle), but later used as a garrison camp for the wall.  Excavations have been going on here for 50 years, during which time over 5 million people have visited the site, but it is estimated that there are still at least 150 years worth of archaeology to be explored.....

From Vindolanda we move on to Housesteads, Britain’s most complete Roman fort, standing on the dramatic Whin Sill escarpment, flanked by stretches of Hadrian’s Wall. Here we see Fairy Foxgloves and Wall-rue clinging to the north face of the wall:

And to the East and to the West the wall snakes its way across the land, an extraordinary stretch of imagination and engineering, still standing after nineteen hundred years.....

The day is fine, but I know how bleak it can be up here, and am reminded of W H Auden's Roman Wall Blues:

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why.

And so, on our return, we pay our respects to Auden at Blanchland Abbey:

Where in the 1930s the poet stayed in the 12th century Lord Crewe Arms and, apparently stayed up late drinking champagne and playing Brahms on the pub piano.  His view was that, No spot brings me sweeter memories.....

Monday is grey and cloudy, and we head south, back to the Yorkshire Dales, where Hardraw Force still spills down the cliff despite the recent lack of rain....

Then, again through cloud and over winding hill roads, to Muker:

From where we walk up Swaledale toward Keld, through hay meadows some of which are protected as part of the Muker Meadows Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and the Northern Pennine Dales Meadows Special Area of Conservation (SAC). 

The fields here are ablaze with meadow buttercup, selfheal, pignut and red clover:

And here are some wood crane's bill:

The river is half full, if that, but there is still a great deal of life to be seen: common sandpipers flit up stream away from us; dippers bob in the gushing rills and martins whip past at speed, 

The valley is decked with ruined farms and barns, where life went by for centuries, it is now in part abandoned:

But at Reeth we find tranquillity, the river calmly slipping away to the east,

The sky cloaking the hills, as night begins to close in and our journey north comes to an end....

And I remember every town

And every hotel room.....

And I remember every night

Your ocean eyes of blue

How I miss you in the morning light

Like roses miss the dew

I Remember Everything

Pat Mclaughlin / John E Prine

*****

Should you wish to see more pictures of Hadrian's Wall and the Yorkshire Dales, please see:

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2014/08/hadrians-wall.html

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2017/07/mrs-yorkshire-dales-diary.html

and for the Yorkshire Sculpture Part (and John Prine) 

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2025/04/north.html

*****

*****

Spirit of Place

Far Horizons

The other day, on my Thames Path Walk, I stopped briefly at Kelmscott Manor, the summer home for many years of William Morris and his entourage. 

Kelmscott Manor

It is a peaceful place, its old stones and leaded windows giving it a dignity that is then gently upheld by the unpretentious gardens.

In keeping with the charitable aim of my walk, I remember the visit here in 2013 that I made with my wife, Amanda.

Amanda was fond of the designs that Morris, Burne-Jones, Webb and Rossetti produced under the general umbrella of the Arts and Crafts movement.  

But perhaps I was more interested in the collective efforts, the dynamic of such groups of people who shared ideas and thoughts and inspired art that was essentially something to be lived with..... 

Red House, Bexley heath

I may be wrong [You often are.... Ed] but I have found visiting the homes of writers and artists (too many to mention, but for example, W B Yeats's Thoor Ballylee, Dylan Thomas's Boat House, Hardy's Cottage, Shaw's Corner and Henry Moore's Perry Green, T E Lawrence's Clouds Hill and New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon..... As well places abroad such as Thomas Mann's Buddenbrookhaus in Lübeck or Leopardi's House in Recanati.... [As you said, too many to mention.... Ed].....  Yes, I have found that visiting the homes of artists, writers and musicians (Elgar's, Britten's, Palestrina's.... I could go on [You do.  Ed]) gives me more of an idea of their lives and inspiration that any amount of academic research, [Lightweight!  Ed].

Kelmscott House, Hammersmith

William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow

But this, however, is/was merely a preamble to the recent trip we made to Sussex, to follow up an exhibition of the work of Lee Miller at The Tate....

My point is, perhaps [You don't know?  Ed] that open communities of people with similar interests can be very fertile ground for developing ideas.  It is true that some artists and writers work best in isolation (and need much undisturbed time to get to grips with their creations) but, I think, it is rare that such people don't also enjoy conversation and socialisation and contact with others.  An example might be Joyce in Paris, where he would work scrupulously through the mornings, but then frequent Les Deux Magots, or such haunts, for white wine (which he called electricity) and company later in the day.

However, before we track down Lee Miller at Farleys, we visit Charleston, which in 1916 became the home of Vanessa Bell with her friend and lover Duncan Grant (and his partner David Garnett), who, as conscientious objectors, sought farm work and a place out of London.

Charleston in Firle, East Sussex

They never bought the 16th century farmhouse, but rented it continuously until Grant's death in 1978 (Vanessa Bell died in 1961).  In between the wars they returned to London, but used it as a retreat and holiday home.  At the start of the Second World War they returned here permanently.

The Bloomsbury Group, which included Vanessa's sister Virginia Woolf, as well as the artist Roger Fry, frequently met here and it would have been buzzing with experimental thinking and alternative ideas. My late friend, the novelist Simon Mawer, was fascinated by the life of the place and was working on a novel set here when he died prematurely last year.

Right from the start, Bell and Grant decorated every room with their art work - not just paintings, but also textiles, ceramics and furniture.  Now preserved by the Charleston Trust it is today a place where visitors may appreciate the ambience as it was but may also enjoy exhibitions or take part in a year-round calendar of festivals and events.

The studio is especially interesting - though it was an add-on and is in need of repair now. It has a real sense of being lived in and used, and it is almost as if it is only temporarily without a practising artist.....

Outside, the gardens are another work of art, with a naturalness that goes well with the informality of the house.

Anyway, after a breath of air and some wonderful views from nearby 217 metre high Firle Beacon:

Looking north from Firle Beacon - Charleston is off to the right

The horizon stretches beyond our vision, teasing the imagination, befuddling the focus - we head to Farleys Farm.....

Farleys House, Muddles Green, Chiidingly, East Sussex

As the website for Farleys House & Gallery (Home of the Surrealists) says, The exterior of Farleys House gives no hint of the visual excitements to be discovered within. You will find brightly coloured walls, rambling corridors and generously proportioned oddly asymmetric rooms filled with a remarkable and eclectic collection of artworks, all of which provides the visitor with a glimpse into the remarkable lives of its former occupants Lee Miller and Roland Penrose.

Farleys House, Muddles Green, East Sussex

All of the above is true, though you can only visit the ground floor, and photography is prohibited, so I cannot share with you the variety of exhibits nor the range of rooms, from Lee Miller's custom-built kitchen (towards the end of her life she became a cordon bleu chef) to her own book-lined study, but, thanks to the Farleys Team, this is the Dining Room, a part of the original farmhouse,

Fireplace, Farleys House, East Sussex, England by Tony Tree (j13a)

Tony Tree © Lee Miller Archives, England 2026. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk

and this is a corner of the sitting room:

Sitting Room Farleys House, East Sussex, England by Jim Holden (JH 0278)

Jim Holden © Lee Miller Archives, England 2026. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk

The tour is fascinating - but the legacies of Lee Miller, one of the twentieth century's most remarkable photographers (she was, among many other things, a brilliant fashion photographer in New York but then also an extraordinarily tenacious and risk-taking war photographer in the Second World War, capturing the fall of Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden, and being amongst the first to enter the concentration camp at Dachau) and that of her husband Roland Penrose, an artist in his own right, but also founder of the ICA and biographer of Picasso..... These are closely guarded and, with reason, so are the art works within the house.

And the gardens, including Lee's own herb garden, are a treat.....

And within sight of the Long Man of Wilmington on the northern slope of Windover Hill, there are some interesting exhibits which I was allowed to photograph....

Including this Sea Creature, the creation of Antony Penrose, the son of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, who is still resident at the Farm.

Sea Creature, 2000, Oak and Lead, Antony Penrose

It was a delight to meet Antony, whose books about his mother include The Lives of Lee Miller:

  Lee Miller's War:

and Lee Miller: Photographs:

Antony was charming and welcoming and clearly loves the interest people are taking in his family and his home.  I am very grateful to him for granting me permission to use these snapshots:

Antony Penrose

I don't think I am misrepresenting history by saying that the relationship between Lee and her son could have been better during his childhood, but then not everyone's mother can be described as: Photojournalist, war correspondent, model and Surrealist muse.... one of the most important women photographers of the twentieth century.....  And not only that, when you read about her life, particularly during the war and immediately afterwards, it is exhausting just to read about it!  Imagine what it must have been like to live it? Not many could have stood that pace, that stress, that pressure. And then to marry and have a child?  Settling down can not have been straightforward.

Tony was born in London in 1947, but in 1949 they all moved to Farleys, where he grew up largely supervised by Patsy Murray, the daughter of Lee and Roland's housekeeper and cook. While the house was often alive with famous guests (Picasso visited twice, but friends and connections included a Who's Who of contemporary artists) it wasn't until he was an adolescent that he grew to know Lee better. In the sixties, as he describes in The Lives of Lee Miller, things began to improve: he had escaped from school and home early and after some years in engineering found he missed the cows and the land too much, so began to study farming. Absence from from home for long periods while he worked on other people's farms  helped heal the breaches. Gradually he and Lee became more tolerant of each other.  Whenever he brought friends home, Lee was as welcoming and hospitable to them as she was to her own guests.....

Antony Penrose

Then, in 1971, Tony embarked on a three year round-the-world trip, returning in late 1974 with his New Zealand born wife, Suzanna, and setting up home and starting his own family nearby. Sadly, however, despite the new-found closeness, Lee was diagnosed with cancer, and she died on July 21st, 1977.

*****

Ours was an inspiring trip, in a lovely part of this world.  I feel I understand Lee Miller a little better for the visit, and, when subsequently we called in at the 18th century Six Bells Pub in Chiddingly, where Lee had taken Vogue models  as well as guests such as Picasso, Man Ray and Max Ernst, I felt even more as if she was still around. The pub is a friendly delight and really has not changed much over the years. It was almost as though time had paused, and something rare was in the air.....

The weather was perfect, and afterwards we walked on the South Downs Way, near the Seven Sisters, with the land, sea and sky all distinct but interacting, each an important part of the view, contributing to something both awe-inspiring and at the same time harmonious.  It was not hard to imagine how it was once, and how it may be again.....  My horizons have been extended, I think.....

I like the phrase Spirit of Place (genius loci) - which Lawrence Durrell used as a title for some essays and letters about places he loved in Greece and the Aegean. It refers to the character of a location and melds the physical features of a place with its cultural aspects and human connections. Here, at Charleston and then at Farleys, though I cannot pretend to know much about the people who came and went through these spaces (John Maynard Keynes? OK, I should know, but it's all a blank.....) I feel the frisson of an imaginative world, and come away feeling somehow the better for it......

*****

For more details about Charleston please see:

https://www.charleston.org.uk/house/

and for more about Farleys this is the link:

https://www.farleyshouseandgallery.co.uk/farleys-house/

And should you like this and would like to know  more about William Morris, please see my earlier piece at:

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2013/06/feeling-william-morr-ish.html

*****

With very many thanks to my autista and compagna.

*****