Indholdsfortegnelse for October - November 2023 i Discover Britain

Suffolk is home to some of England’s oldest and most extraordinary medieval timber-framed buildings. These ancient beauties may now be leaning precipitously, but they’re a tangible connection to a lost world – a time when East Anglia was the powerhouse of England, made wealthy by wool. Suffolk’s so-called ‘Wool Towns’, including Lavenham, Long Melford, and Clare, were at the epicentre of East Anglia’s medieval cloth industry. Toiling in their tiny cottages, workers and their families transformed raw fleeces into cloth. Their specialist skills in dyeing, spinning, weaving, and finishing meant the region became the focus for the booming woollen trade, which reached its peak in the 1400s. Wealthy wool merchants gave generously to the Church and spent lavishly on their houses. With no decent local stone quarries, but an abundant…

DISCOVER THE EAST OF ENGLAND – HISTORY From the control tower windows, I can see overgrown air strips unfurl among the silent Norfolk fields of beet and wheat. Behind me, on the ground, green Nissen huts encapsulate the story of Americans whose planes once roared through the East Anglian skies. US air force pilots took off from converted RAF airfields, or dozens of hastily built new ones, in ‘Flying Fortress’ B-17 planes with 100-feet wing spans, and bombed Nazi-occupied Europe from the air – helping the Allied forces to victory in 1945. With their feet on English soil, the GIs danced to Glenn Miller’s music and shared chocolate, chewing gum and Coca Cola with nearby villagers. The restored control tower I am in belonged to the 100th Bombardment Group (H)…

While transporting the coffin of a young man across wild fells, a pony suddenly bolts off from its party into the Cumbrian wilderness. Neither the coffin nor cart can be found. Several months later, that boy’s mother dies, and another small horse begins taking her along the same cross-country route between Wasdale Head and St Catherine’s Church, near Boot. At precisely the same location, it too surges off. This time, a body is eventually found, but it is the son’s; his mother’s remains never reappear. So goes the legend of the Eskdale corpse road — one thereafter supposedly haunted by the mother’s coffin, which appears pulled by a galloping steed, and one that later inspired The Shadow of a Crime, a page-turner by the highly popular Victorian novelist Hall Caine.…

Located on the Norfolk coast, near the village of Holkham, Holkham Hall is one of the most treasured stately homes in Britain – an 18th-century neo-Palladian country house that borrows from the Roman antiquity-style of architecture with columns and symmetrical design, though with a more austere approach than its Italian influencers. The house as we see it today was built by Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester, on land that had been owned by his family since 1605. Like so many creatives of his day, Thomas Coke was inspired in his designs by what he saw on his Grand Tour of Europe when he was a teenager – a six-year trip in which he met William Kent, who shared his love of Romanesque design and was the lead architect, and…

The coast of Norfolk stretches for nearly 100 miles from the Wash in the west to Hopton-on-Sea, south of Great Yarmouth. The coastline itself is abundant with flora and fauna, including the seal colonies and birdlife for which the county is famous. In fact, three quarters of the north Norfolk coastline is designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. However, that very same coastline has proved extremely hazardous to ships for centuries. For example, in the early 1800s it was estimated that four fifths of all shipwrecks in the UK were off the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk. There is a series of sandbanks in the North Sea that run from Cromer to Happisburgh and are known collectively as the Devil’s Throat because of the regularity with which boats are…

Christopher Wren, that most famous of architects, was a passionate Londoner, lauded above all for designing St Paul’s Cathedral, whose iconic dome adds grandeur to the capital’s skyline. This year marks the centenary of his death and as the many exhibitions and lectures taking place as part of the Wren 300 celebrations prove, there is so much more to his legacy than St Paul’s, both in London and across England. After St Paul’s burned down in the Great fire of London of September 1666, Wren was the obvious choice for King Charles II to ask to rebuild it – and the 50 other City of London churches that had also been destroyed in the fire – as his reputation preceded him. The 1660s were already proving to be an exciting…

Solo travel planning I just wanted to let you know how much I have loved reading Discover Britain and Scotland [our sister mag – Ed]. My husband, father, his wife, and I went on a wonderful trip in 2019. We spent two weeks in Scotland and a week in London. We tried to see as much as possible and these magazines helped us plan. My favourite part of the journey was the first week – we spent several nights at Culzean Castle (pictured above) and visited my husband’s grandmother Margaret Love’s hometown of Kilwinning. We visited the Kilwinning Abbey (so great) and The William Love Memorial Hall (my husband’s grandmother’s family member). The last stop was The Museum of Ayrshire Country Life and Costume where we received a guided tour…

Straddling the River Cam, which gives the city its name, Cambridge is as resplendent and fine an English city as one could find. Easily rivalling its boat race opponent of Oxford for splendour and history, Cambridge is the suffix in the ‘Oxbridge’ amalgamation which refers to Britain’s oldest and most prestigious two universities that have spawned many a prime minister, novelist, renowned scientist and – in Cambridge’s case at least – comedian. For Cambridge’s Footlights is perhaps the poshest yet most consistently good comedy troupe in all these isles – introducing to the world Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, even Oscarwinner Olivia Colman. Much like its adversary, the university and its many colleges dominate Cambridge’s skyline. Oxford is the older of the two universities, founded in 1096, with Cambridge’s…

To the east of Cambridgeshire and the north of Suffolk, Norfolk is the third county making up what is known as East Anglia. It’s a county that has traditionally relied as much on its fishing industry as it has agriculture, jutting out in the North Sea as it does, like the knobbly shoulder of the southern half of England. It was here some 950,000 years ago that the first Britons arrived, setting up home near the village of Happisburgh in the north-east of the county, though understandably knowledge of these early people is scant. The name Norfolk was coined by much later settlers, the Anglo-Saxons, and may have been a derivation of the words ‘Norse’ and ‘folk’ or have meant ‘northern people’, as at the time Norfolk was the northern…

Suffolk is a beautiful English county, brimming with old, pretty, wool towns, and quiet rural villages, all separated by verdant green countryside. Bury St Edmunds is one of the region’s largest historic towns and home to Bury St Edmunds Abbey, once one of the richest and most revered monasteries in England, where England’s first patron saint, Edmund, was buried more than 1,000 years ago in the 10th century, though mystery surrounds where his remains lie today. We have teamed up with The Cameron Hotel Collection, which has three delightful properties located in and around Bury St Edmunds, to offer one lucky winner and their guest the chance to win a relaxing two-night stay at any one of them. The winner can choose between The Priory Hotel, in Bury St Edmunds,…

CRAFTS When Ian G Brennan was appointed Sculptor to the Most Noble Order of the Garter and the Most Honourable Order of the Bath in 1989, he was told that the main criterion of the job was “to be able to carve anything”. More than 140 heraldic woodcarvings later, he can look back on everything from swans and lions to an axe-wielding hand, in the course of fashioning the outsized limewood crowns, coronets and crests that are placed over the stalls (seats) of newly created knights: in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle (Order of the Garter), and in the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey (Order of the Bath). Ian’s Hampshire workshop and studio – in a garden frequented by wildlife from the neighbouring nature reserve – are bursting…

Crossword no 236 Solutions in next issue Across 6 Leader of the Conservative Party from 1923 to 1937 (7)8 Historic village in the Hart district of Hampshire with the ruins of a 13th-century castle (6)9 Small coastal town and fishing port in south-east Cornwall (4)10 County in which Hastings and Battle are situated (4,6)11 William _______ , Dorset poet whose best-known poem is Linden Lea (6)12 Small market town in Cumbria near Hadrian’s Wall (8)14 Richard _______ , statesman granted the earldom of Warwick in 1449 (7)16 Bird of prey often seen hovering (7)19 Sir Alfred _______ , renowned painter of horses (1878-1959) (8)21 Cereal used for making malt liquors and spirits (6)22 Composer of the song The Stately Homes of England (4,6)24 River that flows through York (4)25 A…