We set off bright and early with Jimmy driving. Steff and Jimmy were to spend the day with Jimmy’s family working on his niece’s home, so they drove us down and dropped us off at Burghley House at about ten a.m. The house is amazing; a lot like a child’s drawing of a castle with little turrets and pinnacles everywhere and golden standards flying from them all. Behind and amongst all this rooftop glory is a terrace that the family and guests could walk on when they wanted to engage in conversations that they did not want the ever present servants to overhear. The house was built by William Cecil, the first Lord Burghley, who was Lord High Treasurer and Chief Minister to Elizabeth I. It was passed down through his descendants until 1981 when the 6th Marquess died, with the house and contents coming under the care of a charitable trust set up by him. The title was inherited by his brother and then his nephew, who all lived in Canada. One member of the family always lives there, and when the incumbent dies or retires, another member of the family will take over, as tenant and a member of the trust. Family members have to apply and be interviewed, with selection not relating to hierarchy within the family but to suitability to carry out trust duties.
The grounds are extensive, with Capability Brown having ripped out the original formal gardens and replaced it with a natural look park and a lake. We went for a wander, since nothing opened until 11 am, admiring the deer now grazing without a care near the house, the bridge over the lake with its ornate lions guarding the entry, the preparations for some horse event, the cross country jumps, the deer protectors around younger trees and the beauty of the ancient trees grown with spacings that allow them to develop fully. There is nothing so glorious as standing by an immense trunk looking up into the summer leaves and the enormous spans of ancient branches.
At last it was eleven o’clock and we could enter the gardens. The Surprise Garden is exactly that and was built by the retiring trustee and the trust, opening only last year. Based on the writings of Sir William Cecil, which described his original gardens and his ideas, the Surprise Gardens incorporate many Elizabethan features, such as sudden squirtings with water, roman statues, a rotating bust of Caesar, hedges, sculptures that change, ancient time telling and calendar devices, grottos, and ferneries with constant water sprayings that have resulted in the gem-studded cave being covered in mosses.
The elegant and intriguing sculptures representing the seasons all had buttons that could be pressed to bring on rain, cause grass and flowers to sprout spectacularly, form icicles and produce steam, each according to the season represented.
A large scale board on the ground was set up for people to play the ancient game of Merrelles and a performance area was being used by a band playing Elizabethan instruments.
Children were frolicking in the water fountains designed for their enjoyment. As well as running the realm as advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, Sir William Cecil had time to be his own architect for the house and to advise gardeners on how to create gardens that would amuse his friends when they came down to stay for extended periods in the country. He fell out of favour at one stage but clawed his way back after waiting for the tide to turn in his sovereign’s opinions and favours.
Beyond the Surprise Garden, we entered a landscaped garden with trees and shrubs leading to the lake, dotted with sculptures. This was a simply beautiful part of the garden, with beds and shrubs used to divide areas up, but all carefully following the contours of the land and creating a natural look. The works are by contemporary artists, with some grabbing attention by contrast of their materials and composition and others nestling into their sites and looking as if they had always belonged there.
Beyond the Surprise Garden, we entered a landscaped garden with trees and shrubs leading to the lake, dotted with sculptures. This was a simply beautiful part of the garden, with beds and shrubs used to divide areas up, but all carefully following the contours of the land and creating a natural look. The works are by contemporary artists, with some grabbing attention by contrast of their materials and composition and others nestling into their sites and looking as if they had always belonged there.
A hill with a door in it held the old ice house, where ice from the lake was stored deep down in the earth, with layers of straw between the blocks, which stayed frozen for two years. The ice would be broken up into smaller chunks for use in the kitchens. This icehouse was built in the late 18th Century but similar ice houses were in use from the 16th century on.
A lunch break charged up our batteries for the visit to the house. We passed the enormous stables and yard and the equally spacious and obviously important kennels. The first port of call was the Brew House, which sets the scene really well for visiting the rooms. As soon as we entered our attention was grabbed by the talking heads projected onto the walls. The previous family trustee was speaking in refined tones of her enjoyment of the house and of how, when her family went there, she thought that they must be very poor because they seemed to be eating off tin plates. A little girl at the time, she voiced her worries in front of the butler who hissed at her that she was a silly child and that the plates were silver. Suddenly there was a switch back to Sir William Cecil and he and his descendants had a discussion about the various changes that they had made to the house and gardens with a fair bit of criticism being tossed backwards and forwards between them. It was an excellent way to help visitors understand the times and changes and the challenges that different generations faced with expenses, fashions and interests. I was on Sir William’s side against the fifth Earl who did away with the formal gardens, and sympathetic with the more recent family members who had to sell some of the collection of furniture and paintings to pay for the exorbitant duties and taxes, and the next generation who saw their family home become the property of a charitable trust.
An exhibition showed treasures and craftsmanship from the Elizabethan era, with some really beautiful miniature work in precious metals. The draft of a letter from Sir William Cecil to Queen Elizabeth I was on display, with him putting forward reasons against her proposed marriage, along with a letter from her suggesting that she was still of an age when women have been known to conceive and so a marriage should be considered.
We crossed a beautiful courtyard to the main house and the state rooms, which we expected to be just a few rooms but which are lots of rooms, with every one containing precious art works and furniture. The guides were absolutely magnificent – volunteers with a real love of the house and incredibly detailed knowledge of the history of the family, the people in the portraits, the artists and furniture makers. A lady in the enormous kitchen told us that the spit in front of the fire was turned by a device which operated by hot air rising in the chimney turning blades connected to a complex series of shafts, cogs and chains. A hollow copper boot warmer in the shape of a boot must have made life comfortable on freezing mornings for the gentry but miserable for the maids who had to light the fire to warm the water in the first place. The number and variety of jelly moulds was incredible, and only matched by the collection of polished copper pots and pans.
There were sixty bells connecting the rooms to the servants’ quarters, with different systems from different eras to alert the staff to which room help was required in. The household operated on a grand scale, with a full chapel for the family and their guests and another area for staff to pray in. The difference in the way of life for the different classes is underlined by the furnishings and provision for leisure in the billiard room, with drinking and gambling being regular activities in the 17th Century, while a note in the kitchen reminds servants not to spend more time in there than is strictly necessary for carrying out their duties, so even a snatched moment of leisure was frowned upon.
The house was enhanced in later eras by paintings on the walls and ceilings in many of the rooms, in a style that seems incredibly extravagant and which seems to include as many bouncing naked women as allusions to mythology and ancient Rome will allow. All the rooms are named. Every room has interesting furniture with stories behind it, such as the chair from the Doge’s palace in Venice, the bed that Princess Victoria slept in, Queen Elizabeth I’s bedroom with its state bed of great grandeur and fabulous paintings such as the portraits of Martin Luther, Henry VIII and serious little two year old Georgiana, Lord Cecil’s granddaughter, in a completely formal adult Elizabethan outfit.
Ceilings depicting heaven and hell are fascinating in seeing what was considered appropriate, with the idea seeming to be in both rooms that more rather than less was the way to go. A staircase took us from the depictions of hell down into the great hall, which was a very large room with a double hammer beam roof where you could imagine great entertainments and local dispute settlement taking place. Later generations had had enormous book cases added, their large volumes of books, all looking almost identical and now being protected by wire over the doors. This was definitely a ‘no touching’ house but my fingers itched to open some of the volumes. The fireplace was of a size appropriate to the scale of the room and had been added in the Tudor period. Later, in Sussex, we were to see a hall in a house with an open fire place in the centre of the room with no chimney, the smoke leaving by the windows which had wooden shutters and no glass originally.
One of the family members, David George Brownlow Cecil, had been represented England in the Olympic Games, winning gold and silver medals for running. The program showed everyone else as Joe Blow etc but he was entered as ‘Lord Burghley’.
The film Chariots of Fire had him as a central character.
It had been a fascinating visit and a great insight into a way of life that had changed over generations in one family. The house has featured in the films ‘Elizabeth: The Golden Age’, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, and ‘Pride and Prejudice’, all films that we now want to see.
We followed the road into Stamford, also the location of much of Pride and Prejudice where, during the filming, front doors had to be changed because letter slits had not been invented until the 1840s. Stamford is the town of Meryton in the film. Stamford was proclaimed a conservation area in 1967, having luckily missed out on the changes that the industrial revolution brought since it was bypassed by the railways, bombing during WWII and post war development. As a town, it took the side of the Yorkists in the War of the Roses and was much damaged by the Lancastrian army, which conquered it in 1461. It has stone buildings and a medieval character today, with some buildings showing that it was a town much, much earlier than that.
A lunch break charged up our batteries for the visit to the house. We passed the enormous stables and yard and the equally spacious and obviously important kennels. The first port of call was the Brew House, which sets the scene really well for visiting the rooms. As soon as we entered our attention was grabbed by the talking heads projected onto the walls. The previous family trustee was speaking in refined tones of her enjoyment of the house and of how, when her family went there, she thought that they must be very poor because they seemed to be eating off tin plates. A little girl at the time, she voiced her worries in front of the butler who hissed at her that she was a silly child and that the plates were silver. Suddenly there was a switch back to Sir William Cecil and he and his descendants had a discussion about the various changes that they had made to the house and gardens with a fair bit of criticism being tossed backwards and forwards between them. It was an excellent way to help visitors understand the times and changes and the challenges that different generations faced with expenses, fashions and interests. I was on Sir William’s side against the fifth Earl who did away with the formal gardens, and sympathetic with the more recent family members who had to sell some of the collection of furniture and paintings to pay for the exorbitant duties and taxes, and the next generation who saw their family home become the property of a charitable trust.An exhibition showed treasures and craftsmanship from the Elizabethan era, with some really beautiful miniature work in precious metals. The draft of a letter from Sir William Cecil to Queen Elizabeth I was on display, with him putting forward reasons against her proposed marriage, along with a letter from her suggesting that she was still of an age when women have been known to conceive and so a marriage should be considered.
We crossed a beautiful courtyard to the main house and the state rooms, which we expected to be just a few rooms but which are lots of rooms, with every one containing precious art works and furniture. The guides were absolutely magnificent – volunteers with a real love of the house and incredibly detailed knowledge of the history of the family, the people in the portraits, the artists and furniture makers. A lady in the enormous kitchen told us that the spit in front of the fire was turned by a device which operated by hot air rising in the chimney turning blades connected to a complex series of shafts, cogs and chains. A hollow copper boot warmer in the shape of a boot must have made life comfortable on freezing mornings for the gentry but miserable for the maids who had to light the fire to warm the water in the first place. The number and variety of jelly moulds was incredible, and only matched by the collection of polished copper pots and pans.
There were sixty bells connecting the rooms to the servants’ quarters, with different systems from different eras to alert the staff to which room help was required in. The household operated on a grand scale, with a full chapel for the family and their guests and another area for staff to pray in. The difference in the way of life for the different classes is underlined by the furnishings and provision for leisure in the billiard room, with drinking and gambling being regular activities in the 17th Century, while a note in the kitchen reminds servants not to spend more time in there than is strictly necessary for carrying out their duties, so even a snatched moment of leisure was frowned upon.
The house was enhanced in later eras by paintings on the walls and ceilings in many of the rooms, in a style that seems incredibly extravagant and which seems to include as many bouncing naked women as allusions to mythology and ancient Rome will allow. All the rooms are named. Every room has interesting furniture with stories behind it, such as the chair from the Doge’s palace in Venice, the bed that Princess Victoria slept in, Queen Elizabeth I’s bedroom with its state bed of great grandeur and fabulous paintings such as the portraits of Martin Luther, Henry VIII and serious little two year old Georgiana, Lord Cecil’s granddaughter, in a completely formal adult Elizabethan outfit.
Ceilings depicting heaven and hell are fascinating in seeing what was considered appropriate, with the idea seeming to be in both rooms that more rather than less was the way to go. A staircase took us from the depictions of hell down into the great hall, which was a very large room with a double hammer beam roof where you could imagine great entertainments and local dispute settlement taking place. Later generations had had enormous book cases added, their large volumes of books, all looking almost identical and now being protected by wire over the doors. This was definitely a ‘no touching’ house but my fingers itched to open some of the volumes. The fireplace was of a size appropriate to the scale of the room and had been added in the Tudor period. Later, in Sussex, we were to see a hall in a house with an open fire place in the centre of the room with no chimney, the smoke leaving by the windows which had wooden shutters and no glass originally.
One of the family members, David George Brownlow Cecil, had been represented England in the Olympic Games, winning gold and silver medals for running. The program showed everyone else as Joe Blow etc but he was entered as ‘Lord Burghley’.
The film Chariots of Fire had him as a central character.
It had been a fascinating visit and a great insight into a way of life that had changed over generations in one family. The house has featured in the films ‘Elizabeth: The Golden Age’, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, and ‘Pride and Prejudice’, all films that we now want to see.
We followed the road into Stamford, also the location of much of Pride and Prejudice where, during the filming, front doors had to be changed because letter slits had not been invented until the 1840s. Stamford is the town of Meryton in the film. Stamford was proclaimed a conservation area in 1967, having luckily missed out on the changes that the industrial revolution brought since it was bypassed by the railways, bombing during WWII and post war development. As a town, it took the side of the Yorkists in the War of the Roses and was much damaged by the Lancastrian army, which conquered it in 1461. It has stone buildings and a medieval character today, with some buildings showing that it was a town much, much earlier than that.
We crossed the foot bridge into town and made our way through the streets to St Martins Church. Here we found the tomb of William Cecil, the first Lord Burghley, with his likeness in stone resting upon it. Other family members are commemorated here, so in spite of having their own chapel, they must have had connections to this parish church. 
Over our time in Stamford we visited four of the five remaining medieval churches, all in fairly close proximity, and we saw other later protestant churches as well – this must have been a very devout and reasonably affluent community to support so many clergy and fine buildings.A different side of Stamford remains with the gallows across the main road, reminding us that hanging was a public entertainment as well as a deterrent, with bodies sometimes being left dangling for days. We collected an excellent walking tour map from the tourist information centre and set off around the town, really noticing the little details that showed different eras of buildings now that we had some information to guide us. The town is simply so charming, with some changes ensuring that life goes on in comfort and with the facilities that modern life demands, while respect for the older fabric of the town is obviously paramount. It was getting late when we called in at a church where a double for the Vicar of Dibly asked in a jolly girls hockey team kind of way if we were for the wedding or if we were just ordinary folks wanting a ‘look see’. While we were looking around the lady came back in with a nervous young woman, showed her where she would be walking on the big day and suggested she have a go at walking down the aisle with dignity now. The girl declined, even after tales of how brides have fallen on their faces, and I was appealed to. I took the side of having a trial walk just to have a sense of how long it will take and to feel familiar with it. The girl still wanted to just look from as far away as possible, and seemed as uncomfortable as it is possible to be despite the lady doing everything she could to help her. I wondered how the wedding would go and if the groom would turn up for that, or if he would fail to make it to the church again, since he had not come to the practice.
Finally it was time to meet up with Steff and Jimmy, and since they had not quite finished their jobs, to have a ridiculously highly priced cup of coffee at the hotel beside the gallows. We felt entitled to wait there for ages, our coffee having cost enough to feel like we had paid for lodgings.
During our speedy trip home, a lunatic young motor cyclist swerved in and out of traffic, did some crazy driving that would have wrecked his tyres and then zoomed away from the rest of the cars at such speed that I was sure we would come upon his body and the smashed bike in no time. It would not have been possible for the cars to stop if his crazy driving had landed him on the road and imagine the trauma it would have caused the driver who ran over and killed him. I was thinking about his family too – it was all very scary for a while.
Maureen had prepared a meal for us all, so we had a relaxing evening and yet another late night.
The 'ha ha' on large estates does the same job as a farm fence in keeping the animals (deer, sheep, cattle) off the lawns and gardens around the home.
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