Anglesey Abbey

Tags

Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge, country house, gardens, Lord Fairhaven, National Trust, snowdrops, winter aconites

Elinor had an interview at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge one Saturday at the beginning of February.  Both Richard and I accompanied her there and waited in the Ruskin Gallery while she went on a tour of the art facilities and then had her interview.  I admired the light fittings which, as with many functional buildings and their fittings designed pre WW2, were beautiful in their own right.

I am not referring to the modern lights but to the wrought iron that attaches the bar ( from which oil lamps were hung, I assume ) to the ceiling.

After Elinor had finished at the University we took the bus back to the park-and-ride car park and drove to nearby Anglesey Abbey.  We had hoped for some lunch in the café and a quiet walk round the grounds in the sunshine.  We hadn’t realised that the whole of Cambridgeshire would also have the same idea as us and the place was packed!  We managed to buy some sandwiches and a drink each and fought our way to a table.  After eating we escaped outside and walked about in the sunshine.

Anglesey Abbey is famous for its spring bulbs, especially its snowdrops, and I had wanted to visit for some years.

Snowdrops and winter aconites under the trees.

Wide lawns with under-planted trees.

Masses of snowdrops

Snowdrops and winter aconites.

Snowdrops and winter aconites.

Note the long shadows just after midday in February.

We were getting cold in the strong breeze so decided to look at the house.

The former priory was converted into a dwelling in about the year 1600.

We toured the house but I didn’t manage to get any photographs of the interior.  It was so crowded it was difficult to see many of the rooms which were stuffed with objets d’arts, paintings and furniture as well as people.  The library was wonderful as it not only contained the typical sets of required books that most large libraries have but also many books that were obviously bought to be read and had been read by the family.  We were pleased to see all Lord Fairhaven’s boyhood adventure books on a top shelf.

The library . A photograph I found by searching Yahoo! images.

The dining room; also courtesy of Yahoo! images.

The long gallery was being re-decorated and all the furniture and ornaments from there had been redistributed about the house.  I must admit that most of the furniture and ornaments were not to my taste.

I had wished to see the garden with the silver birches but by the time we left the house we were running out of energy.

The winter garden courtesy of Yahoo! images.

One of the many gardens in the grounds.

A beautiful oriel window.

An espalier pear tree against the wall of the Abbey.

The front of the abbey.

A beautifully prepared garden. I wonder what it will contain later this year!

An attractive bench….

……with Richard sitting on it.

Hellebore

Cyclamen

We left the garden without having seen all of it but with any luck we will return and finish our tour one day.

Dunwich Heath – August 31st 2014

Tags

bell-heather, coastguard cottages, coastline, Dunwich Heath, dwarf gorse, erosion, gorse, heather, heathland, ling, marram, National Trust, sandlings, Sea Kale, shingle beach, Suffolk

Richard, Elinor and I took a trip to Dunwich Heath at the end of August last year.  We wanted to go somewhere different to our usual places but didn’t want to make a long journey.

The old coastguard cottages. The National Trust tearoom is situated in the end cottage.  The other cottages are rented out as holiday homes.

The County of Suffolk has six topographical regions each with its own distinct landscape features.  I live in High Suffolk with its boulder-clay soil but just a couple of miles to the East of us the soil changes and becomes sand and gravel.  This gravelly area is called The Sandlings and Dunwich Heath (part of the Sandlings) is right on the coast.  To quote the National Trust description of the area –

‘Dunwich Heath is where the Sandlings meets the sea.  It is 87 hectares (215 acres) of heather, gorse, grassland, woodland and crumbling sandy cliffs, as well as a mile of shifting sand and shingle beach.  The Sandlings landscape was created by early farmers thousands of years ago.  The sandy, free-draining soils became dominated by heather as farmers cleared the trees and introduced sheep to graze the land.

Within the Sandlings, only at Dunwich does the heathland extend to the cliff top – a rare example of coastal lowland heath.’

The shingle beach and cliffs

Late summer and early autumn is the best time to visit heathland as that is the time the heather is in flower.

We parked the car and walked to the beach first, as the seaside is Elinor’s favourite place to be.

Heather, gorse and bracken by the side of the path.  This heather is going to seed; I love the orange colour of the seed capsules.

We found Sea Kale (Crambe maritima) as usual, with Marram grass (Ammophila arenaria) and Gorse behind it

Heather on the shoreline

You can see here what the cliffs are made of – sand and gravel in layers. It is no wonder they are crumbling away.

The sands are known as ‘crags’.  The southern sandling crags are the oldest – a shelly ‘Coralline Crag’ which was deposited in warm tropical conditions about 3.5 million years ago forms an island and is surrounded by a sea of ‘Red Crag’ which is also full of fossilised shells.  The northern crag known as ‘Norwich Crag’ is younger and is less than 2 million years old.  Dunwich Heath is part of the ‘Norwich Crag’.

I have found three Belemnite fossils in my garden.  Perhaps some gravel containing these fossils was brought to the area when the house was built or perhaps the land where we live is the border between the clay soil and the sandy soil.

The little holes are probably Sand Martin (Riparia riparia) nestholes. The pipe sticking out at the top left of the picture is probably a land drain.

Dunwich has disappeared into the sea at a rate of about 400 metres in 400 years. Houses and other buildings are still lost regularly. I don’t know what the structure at the top left of the picture is, or was!

We could see the town of Southwold to the north.

There is a large expanse of grassland here.

Richard and I left Elinor on the beach and went for a walk.

There were plenty of flowers and grasses to see. Further away across the water meadows and marshes are the two nuclear energy plants at Sizewell.

Parasol fungus (Macrolepiota procera) about 2′ tall!

Honeysuckle – not native

Common Ragwort – Senecio jacobaea

White Campion – Silene latifolia

This is the sight we had come to see. The beautiful heath in flower.

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Heather (Calluna vulgaris) also known as Ling.

Bell Heather(Erica cinerea) – (the larger flowers)

Dwarf Gorse (Ulex minor)  There are plenty of Gorse (Ulex europaeus) bushes on the heath as well.

I heard and then saw a Dartford Warbler (Sylvia undata) on the top of a Gorse bush, but he was too far away to photograph.

A plaque on the cliff-top

The plaque

Clouds

The beach

This next photograph really makes me laugh!

Look at Elinor’s expression! Goodness knows what I must have been wittering on about.

‘Oh wad some power the giftie gie us / To see oursel’s as others see us! / It wad frae monie a blunder free us, / And foolish notion.’  Robert Burns

A Border Force ship patrolling the coast. The modern coastguards.

A sea-watch shelter. Looking at the water can be interesting and calming in itself but often ships, boats and other craft can be seen as well as sea-birds and mammals such as dolphins and seals.

We ended our visit with a cake each and a drink of choice at the tea-room.

A dramatic sunset when we got home.

 

Thank-you for visiting!