Come away with the raggle taggle gypsy-o
Hand crafted gentleman’s attire
A lovely gown made by the Costume Group
Sir Francis and his good wife
The collar detail
And lastly, the lady from my poem last week. She was very knowledgeable and when I admired her hat, she told me that Elizabeth 1st ruled that all ladies should wear woollen hats. This apparently was to help promote the growth of the woollen trade.
I have just been inspired by a TV program to show you three books that I tried to photograph at Buckland Abbey last week. The program, The Century that Wrote Itself, sets out to trace ‘our modern sense of self back to when ordinary people first took up the quill’. These books were not written by ordinary people, but one at least would have been written with a quill.
This one is my favourite and its the oldest, a medieval Antiphonal from Italy in the late 14th century. An Antiphonal is a winter choir book giving the sung parts of the service for each day from the first Sunday of Advent to the feast of Pentecost.
Marianne at http://eastofmalaga.net/ has chosen Multi-colored this month. Her own vibrant photos take on to Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and New Zealand, check them out. Mine are all taken in Marrakech, one of my favourite places, with colour around every corner.
This challenge is a blog hop, to showcase two different blogs that you enjoy each time.
My first is Marina’s art blog http://marinakanavaki.com/ , her tagline is ‘Art Towards a Happy Day’, so very warm and generous. I love the way she uses her art not only as beautiful paintings but transferred to everyday items, at prices that make it accessible to all. Her work ‘As above so below’ is my favourite – so far.
Next, a relatively unknown blog http://2far2shout.wordpress.com/ , Tony has a light touch and describes himself as a slow traveler. He spent part of this winter in Australia and I loved his post about Kiama, God’s waiting room as he says! This time last year he was in India, returning to the places of his childhood. I have a copy of Hero on a Honda, his travel book about that trip.
I hope you visit and enjoy these two blogs!
. . . in Plymouth today with my kids! We saw anemones and jellyfish.
And fantastic fishies
As always click to see a slide show.
Hampered by not being able to use flash I’m afraid!
Grey spectre lady
waiting for precious lost love
four centuries past
Buckland Abbey is on the far west of Dartmoor and spring is late this year. It isn’t a garden with herbaceous border, more formal and functional elegance and sweeping grounds. There is an Elizabethan garden and although it’s box hedges have been damaged by blight in recent years, it has been replanted. The National trust have been working to establish a flowery mead since 2001 and its wild flowers attract butterflies and moths. Each September the mead is cut and to maintain the low nutrients in the soil that grassland needs the cuttings are rmeoved. In day gone by these cutting would have been animal fodder and also strewn around the floor in the house for its sweet fragrance.
Buckland abbey was founded in 1278 by Cistercian monks on land overlooking the tranquil Tavy valley. The monks were responsible for building the great barn, an impressive building which would have been a treasure store of produce grown on the large estate given to them by the then Countess of Devon, Amicia.
The abbey thrived for two hundred and fifty years until the dissolution of monasteries by Henry 8th and in 1541 the monarch sold Buckland to Sir Richard Grenville who converted it into a home, tearing much of it down, but unusually for the time the church was kept to become the main part of the house. Here is the great barn.
I’ll be back tomorrow with some photos of the garden.
Lucid Gypsy 