A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'O'

O - Osborne House

"It's impossible to imagine a prettier spot."

That's what Queen Victoria said of Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

North face of Osborne House, IOW
(CC BY-SA 3.0) 

The Osborne estate was in the hands of the Blachford family from 1705. Robert Pope Blachford  adapted an existing house there in the period 1774 to 1781.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert initially leased that house from the Blachford family before buying it in 1845. As it was too small for them Albert commissioned the master builder and developer, Thomas Cubitt to advise him.

Work on a new house began in 1846, the old house was demolished in 1848 and the new Osborne House's main wing was completed in 1851.

Prince Albert died of typhoid in 1861 and Victoria never really recovered from his death. She was to die at Osborne in 1901.

Neither Edward VII nor any other royal family member wanted the upkeep of the house and estate so , in 1902, he gave Osborne to the nation.

The house and Victoria and Albert's private rooms were sealed on Edward's orders but have been open to the public, with Queen Elizabeth's permission, since 1954.

English Heritage became responsible for management of Osborne in 1986. Since then other parts have accessible to the public as well, including the beach where Victoria used to bathe.

{ The majority of this post has been sourced from English Heritage's Osborne site.}

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - N

N - Normanby Hall

This is a house that provides a link, for me, with Lincolnshire hockey, a steelworks, Buckingham Palace and a Prime Minister's wife.

In 1960 I started work at Richard Thomas & Baldwins Redbourn Works in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire; other works in the town were run by Appleby Frodingham and Lysaghts. The Lysaghts plant was called the Normanby Park steelworks.

I played hockey for Redbourn against App-Frod and the team from Normanby Park whose pitch was located in the estate surrounding Normanby Hall.

Normanby Hall
(12 August 2006 - by E Asterion u talking to me - CC BY-SA 2.5)

This classic English mansion is 5 miles north of Scunthorpe and was built between 1825 and 1830 for Sir Robert Sheffield whose family titles include the Duke of Buckingham.

John Sheffield who had become Duke of Buckingham and Normanby in 1703 built the fine Buckingham House in London - Buckingham Palace as we know it today.

Samantha, the daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield the 8th Baronet is the wife of the recent ex-Prime Minister, David Cameron.

Easter - Sunday Stamps II

I looked for an Easter bunny but found this stamp from 1997 instead.

Great Britain

In 2009 my article in the magazine Ireland's Own entitled 'Mad as a March Hare' include a paragraph which read -

"Our name for Easter may be derived from a goddess associated with spring called Eastre. The date of Easter is tied to the moon, and the hare has strong lunar associations, with hare hunting being a common activity in England." 

Now that's probably illegal.

However I have discovered a rabbit on a set of pet stamps from the USA.

USA - Pets 2015

It may be Easter but I'm spending my time decorating. For those wanting to see more Easter of favourite stamps just check out the links at Sunday-stamps-ii-122.html

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'M'

M - Menabilly

Menabilly, The Seat of Rashleigh, Esq. Cornwall
(Antique print - in public domain)

I first went to Fowey in Cornwall in 2007. By chance our visit coincided with the Daphne du Maurier Festival celebrating her centenary.

The opening of Rebecca, possibly Daphne's most famous novel begins - 

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited."

That opening introduced Manderley, a forbidding house with an equally forbidding, black-clad Mrs Danvers as its housekeeper. The fictional Manderley was modelled on Milton House, near Peterborough the ancestral home of the Fitzwilliam family and the house and gardens of the Cornish Menabilly. 

Menabilly House, Fowey, Cornwall
(Created Jan 1, 1920 - in public domain)

Belonging to the Rashleigh family, Menabilly, became the home for Daphne and her husband from 1943 to 1969, its history and grounds also provided input to novels later than Rebecca.

The first novel she wrote at Menabilly was The King's General. Set during the English Civil war, it was prompted by the discovery, during alterations to Menabilly in the 1820s, of a walled-up skeleton thought to have been a Cavalier. It tells the story of the love between Richard Grenville, The King's General and Royalist Honor Harris, one of du Maurier's strongest heroines.

in 1969 the year she was made a DBE, the Rashleighs wanted to return to Menabilly; despite all the money she had spent on its restoration Daphne was forced to accept a move to its dower house, Kilmarth, where she was to live until her death.

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'L'

L - Lyme Hall

South face of Lyme Park House
(By Julie Anne Workman, 29 September 2013 - CC BY_SA

Lyme Hall in Cheshire was originally a hunting lodge. A house was built there in Tudor time which was turned into an Italiante palace in the early 18th Century.

Once the home of the Legh family it has become 'Pemberley' in the BBC's production of Pride and Prejudice'.

It is now managed by the National Trust,

In this 200th anniversary year of the death of Jane Austen, Lyme turns back the clock to the Regency era, where you can uncover the fascinating story of Thomas Legh, Lyme's very own Regency Indiana Jones.

Orange - Thematic Photography

This has proved quite a challenge as a number of shots of orange flowers turned to yellow instead. What I have left is :

Berberis in our garden

Pansy - petals more orange than yellow

Litter louts leave lots of orange about.

Orange peel that will decompose

Orange drink bottle

Orange drink carton

Time to put a stop to it.

Time for me to tackle our fruit bowl.

As long as I pick the real fruit

For more orange items but hopefully not Agent Orange visit Carmi at thematic-photographic-408-orange.html

A-Z Challenge 2017 - Houses, some real, some not - 'K'

K - Ketton Hall

This is a location with which I was once very familiar.

Gateway to Ketton Hall

( © Copyright Alan Murray-Rust , licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)

As a boy in the Rutland village of Ketton I walked alongside the wall many times and with other lads threw sticks to knock down conkers from the horse chestnut trees that grew along its length. I'll even admit to being given a 'bunk-up' to climb over it. 

Later I walked to the gate at the far right end of the wall, then the entrance to Ketton Cricket Club. More recently it became the way in to a green burial site.

During WWII the Hall was the home of Air Marshal Sir John Baldwin, Acting Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command (1942) and Air Officer Commanding Tactical Air Force (Burma), (1943-1944).

Lady Baldwin, a member of the York Terry's confectionery family, would stop and talk to me (as a five year old) when she passed the wooden gate to my home. I never lived down telling her that my oldest brother had gone to war to stick a bayonet up Hitler's arse!

As for Ketton Hall, it was recently on the market for £2.5 million.