Category Archives: Military

October 2, 2020 · 10:00 am

Living In History

I nearly always blog about the ‘long’ Regency, the era in which almost all my books are set, but like most of us who are passionate about history, any opportunity to get closer to it fires the imagination. One of the best ways of doing that is living in an historic building. Some people are lucky enough to own one, but for the rest of us the Landmark Trust provides brilliant opportunities to live in eras ranging from the Middle Ages to the mid 20th century.

This month I have stayed in three West County Landmarks – two castles (nothing says Social Distancing like a castle), one medieval and one Tudor, and a Listed mid-century house and I thought I’d share them with you.

The first is Stogursey Castle near Bridgwater in Somerset, that just happened to be built by my husband’s distant great grandfather, William de Curci. Stoke de Curci was corrupted into Stogursey, hence the unusual name..

The castle itself is a ruin of curtain walls surrounding the central space where the keep used to stand.

The castle gradually fell into disrepair after the Wars of the Roses but the gatehouse, was  converted into a cottage in the 17th century. One side incorporates the base of a tower and the rest fits into the section where the gate itself would be. It was repaired in the 19th century and then fell into almost terminal decline until rescued by the Trust who discovered a bridge of about 1300 in the process.

We were enchanted to have a sitting room with arrow-slit windows.

The best view was just after sunrise and the only disappointment was that we couldn’t raise a drawbridge. Several walkers came and knocked, clearly under the impression that we could sell them tickets to get inside!

From Stogursey we went to Anderton House, near Barnstable, and couldn’t have found a greater contrast. The house was commissioned in 1969 and is one of the few houses of the period to have Grade II* Listed status.

The view was wonderful and we enjoyed the simple. pared-back design. In the centre, between the living room and kitchen/dining room was a small, open study space (the white wall behind the sofa), as specified by the original owner, who liked to work in the heart of things. I even managed to write a chapter there on a rainy day.

From our 20th century comforts we travelled on to the South Devon coast and Kingswear Castle, opposite Dartmouth Castle. Kingswear Castle was completed in 1502, a Tudor fortlet to defend a significant harbour.  The position is dramatic, the steps (inside and out) guarantee toned calf muscles by the end of the stay and the views are amazing. Here’s the castle from the opposite bank –

And here is the view across the River Dart to Dartmouth Castle in the early morning.

Stogursey Castle gave me the opportunity to soak up general atmosphere but Kingswear has far more practical experiences. The castle was, when it was built, absolutely state of the art. It possessed the first gun ports that allowed cannon to be trained in a wide sweep of fire and these gun ports remain on the lowest level in the gun battery (picture below). They are low in the walls because the guns were on wooden sledges, not on wheels, and were dragged into position. Above some of them you can see the small apertures that may have been sighting holes for the gunners. Even with the primitive cannon of the time the pair of forts between them could cover the width of the river.

Then artillery design improved and the range rapidly increased to the point where Dartmouth Castle alone could fire right across the estuary and Kingswear became more or less redundant after fifty years. It was manned during times of emergency and saw some action during the Civil War, but then there was a fire and it was allowed to fall into decay. In 1855 a wealthy young man, Charles Hayne Seale Hayne (yes, that is the correct name), bought it and turned it into his summer residence. He later became an MP and held office in Gladstone’s government. After his death it had several owners, was occupied by the Marines during the 2nd World War and was rescued again in 1957 by the MP for Torquay as his constituency home. In 1987 he sold it to the Landmark Trust.

Living in the castle now, one has the benefit of a modern kitchen and comfortable sitting room and bedroom, but there are constant reminders of the original purpose of the castle. There is modern plumbing in a bathroom on the roof, in the position where a firing platform would have allowed defenders to shoot at attackers on the landward side – the slope is so steep that the top of the castle is virtually at the level where today one parks the car. This meant that I could conveniently arrange the contents of my washbag in the sockets that carried the beams supporting the platform and could brush my teeth imagining the gunfire and shouts echoing overhead.

The position of the bathroom meant that one had regular experience of living with a stone spiral staircase spanning four floors. It was tough enough in modern clothing and not carrying anything, but negotiating it at night gave me a vivid sense of what it must have been like for defenders, probably in some kind of armour or chainmail, hurrying up and down during an attack. [The image below has been copied from the Landmark Trust website] It also made me wish that the Landmark Trust had seen fit to reinstall the garderobe which was discovered in the alcove that Seale Hayne had used as a wine cupboard and into which a later occupant had installed a large window. It is now in the bedroom.

 

 

Finally, to top off Kingswear’s historical experience, there is the 2nd World War blockhouse.

I look back on ten days experience of the Middle Ages, the early 16thc, the English Civil War, the 2nd World War and the 1970s with my imagination stimulated and ideas jostling for attention – and of course, in expeditions out from our Landmarks I discovered treasures that fitted ‘my’ period perfectly – a very early steam engine and a delicious little Regency ‘Gothic’ house in Totnes, which is surely going to have a place in a future book.

 

2 Comments

Filed under Architecture, Buildings, Domestic life, Military, Rivers

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 24, 2020 · 1:18 pm

The Ghost of a Georgian Prison

I was in Devon recently and, crossing Dartmoor, stopped outside Princetown to look at the gloomy bulk of Dartmoor prison. It isn’t easy to stop and look at the place, let alone take photographs, for obvious security reasons, but these were taken from a legitimate parking space beyond the town.

It is often assumed, possibly because of its looming presence in Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, that it is a Victorian  prison and, as a prison for convicted criminals, it is certainly that. The first arrived in 1850, transferred from the rotting prison hulks on the Thames, and the buildings we can see today were built by, and for, those men and their successors.

However, the first stones were laid on the site in March 1806 on land owned by the Prince of Wales (later Prince Regent). There was no village there, merely farms and an inn. The government had realized that the prison hulks at Portsmouth and other harbours could no longer cope with the flood of prisoners of war from the Napoleonic Wars. Prisoners were dying in large numbers from disease and it became clear that a new land-based prison was necessary. Britain was at war with France from 1793 to 1815 and it is estimated that over 100,000 prisoners, mainly naval, were landed in England during that period.

Officers were easy to deal with. By definition they were ‘gentlemen’ and could therefore be relied upon to keep their word of honour. If they gave their parole, a promise in writing not to escape, they were allowed to live in lodgings in one of the numerous parole towns, mainly near the coast. There were eleven in Hampshire alone.

Ordinary soldiers and sailors and non-commissioned officers were not trusted and had to be confined. Norman Cross prison near Peterborough had been established as early as 1797, but that was not enough and the hulks had proved an inadequate, lethal, alternative.

The new prison at what became known as Princetown, built at a cost or £200,000, received its first prisoners on 22nd May 1809. In September 1810 Ackermann’s Repository published a plan of Dartmoor Prison & English Barracks.

The vast majority of the structures seen in the plan were demolished from 1850 onwards as ‘modern’ cell blocks were built, but, extraordinarily, the basic shape and some features remain in the present prison. If you look at the satellite view of the prison you will see the circular shape has been retained, that the old barracks have gone, but Barrack Road still runs through the site and the entrance gates and the outlet for the aqueduct remain. It is even possible to trace the shape of the entrance yards and the line of the wall that cuts across the circle is still visible. Even the layout of the blocks, radiating outwards, preserves the footprint of the original structures. Presumably one was demolished and rebuilt at a time.

The Repository provides a helpful key. Starting from the bottom of the picture, outside the gates, is Aqueduct to supply prison with water and Pond of water. Opposite is The Grand entrance; with the inscription ‘Parcere subjectis’ cut in the stone arch. [‘Spare the vanquished’ ie be kind to the prisoners!]. If you use Streetview you can read the inscription, still in place, and behind it see a second gate with a bell over it, as seen in the print.

On either side of the main entrance were the Agent’s and Surgeon’s houses with clerks’ houses making up the rest of the little Agent’s square for market, etc. – a reminder that prisoners were allowed to craft items from straw, bone and wood and sell them to the public. This wonderfully intricate box was shown on the Antiques Roadshow in 2020 and valued at £4-6000. It was not only innocent workboxes and ship models that the prisoners sold. An embarrassed and indignant  local member of the Society For the Suppression of Vice posted two of his purchases to the London Headquarters. They appear, from the difficulty he had in wrapping them and his euphemism-laden remarks, to have been sex toys carved from bone.

Once through the next set of gates one was in the Detached space for prisoners to receive their allowance from [the cooking-house], also public market. the cooking-house and bath were at the bottom left of that space. The large building to the left of the space was the hospital with the Matron’s house and dispensary facing it. On the other side was the Petty-officers’ prison, a reminder that most of the prisoners were sailors.

Through the next set of gates one is in the Prison yard with five prison blocks radiating around it. In the outer circle are four Sheds for drying clothes. A large pond was fed from the aqueduct head outside the gates and what are presumably drainage ditches serving privies run around from low sheds at the end of each prison block. These appear to be open, which must have been both smelly and insanitary, although presumably they were flushed from the pond.  On the outside of the military way (coloured green) and walls are the North and South Guard rooms. The detached enclosed area was a Barracks for 500 men.

The Repository positively gushes with admiration for the new prison and its management: Here, under the humane arrangement and control of the Transport Board, ably seconded by the resident agent, Isaac Cotgrave, Esq. an old post-captain, every comfort is administered to alleviate the prisoners’ unhappy lot, as far as the nature of circumstances will allow. Unbiassed by motives foreign to their duty, and the innate liberality and feeling of their hearts, these gentlemen (some of whom are well acquainted with French prisons, and have personally experienced what they are) pursue an undeviating system of philanthropy, honourable to themselves, and beneficial to the objects of their care and exertions.

Efforts were made to maintain hygiene. Every morning, bedding is immediately exposed to the air, and the rooms properly ventilated… The hospital is kept in the most exact state of cleanliness and order…medicines, wine, etc are furnished unsparingly.

The prisoners, who were clothed in yellow uniforms with occasional blue stripes, elected representatives to discuss grievances with the Agent and to inspect the rations issued. A daily market was held so that the prisoners could sell their work and buy additional food and many trifling luxuries.

Whether or not conditions were ever so good in reality, things rapidly went downhill as the prison grew more and more crowded. It was full by the end of 1809 but prisoners still kept arriving. War broke out with America in 1812 and  from April 1813 until April 1815 about 6,500 American sailors were held at Dartmoor, some of which were American seamen who were serving on British ships. It is estimated that about 1,000 of the prisoners were black.

Recurrent outbreaks of typhoid, pneumonia and smallpox swept through the prison population. 271 American died and over 11,000 Frenchmen. When the  Treaty of Ghent between the Americans and British was signed in December 1814, the American prisoners expected immediate release, but the British government refused to let them go on parole or take any steps until the treaty was ratified by the Senate on 17 February 1815. On April 16 the men’s impatience finally snapped and they rioted. Guards opened fire and 60 were injured and seven killed. After an enquiry jointly by the US and British, the survivors and bereaved families received pensions.

The prison stayed in use until the end of the war when the survivors were repatriated. The last Frenchman left in early 1816.

The Repository had noted that, it is said to be in contemplation to convert this vast, and then useless building, into a receptacle for convicts, whose labour on the moor will prove highly important and beneficial to the nation, and an incredible saving in the expense incurred both at home and in transportation. In the event the prison closed in 1816 and only reopened in 1850.

Leave a comment

Filed under Architecture, Buildings, Crime, Military, Riots

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

June 25, 2020 · 10:00 am

The Road To & From Waterloo. Week 18. The End for Napoleon, London Parties, The Country Celebrates

The Allies advanced, carrying with them such booty as Napoleon’s beautifully-fitted carriage (shown in the moment of its capture in the print below), while in Paris the first wounded had begun to arrive the day Napoleon abdicated. Some of the Old Guard were spotted on the streets on the 25th and newspapers and posters appealed for linen and rags to make bandages.
Napoleons carriageBeyond the problems of the wounded, things were looking up. French government stocks rose with the news of Waterloo and kept rising – the abdication and the approach of the Allies pushed it even higher. Labretonnière noted that Paris was taking on an “aristocratic look” and the Tuileries Gardens was filled with “brilliant society”. The English visitor, Hobhouse, was asked why he looked gloomy and wrote that it was strange that the only person not looking happy in the crowd was a foreigner when “you consider that the Square Vendome, close by, is covered at one corner with wounded men, laying on straw.”
On the 25th Napoleon moved to Malmaison, the Empress Josephine’s old residence, fifteen miles west of Paris. As the Allies drove on hard for the capital he fled again on the 29th to Rochefort, a port on the Charente estuary in the South West, hoping at first to flee to America, but eventually surrendering to the British..
On Friday 30th June the Allies opened fire on the plain of St Denis, wakening the Parisians with cannon fire. The French Commission of Government dithered, fighting went on – and, finally, the capitulation was signed on July 3rd. It was all over.
In London that Sunday 25th June, one week after the battle, Londoners were not short of reading material. The Examiner printed “The London Gazette Extraordinary” recapping the events from the arrival of Major Percy onwards and also “Miscellaneous Information Respecting the Late Battles”, filled with a hodgepodge of news gleaned from letters, dispatches and downright speculation.
The whole of London Society seemed to be throwing itself into balls, routs and parties, despite the number of deaths and injuries among the officers aDuke of Brunswickt Waterloo, which must have touched almost every aristocratic and upper class family in the country. The Morning Chronicle’s Mirror of Fashion for Monday 25th June lists eleven forthcoming parties including the Marchioness of Douglas’s “elegant ball and supper”, Mrs Tighe’s “large rout” and Lady Saltown’s “large assembly”. The only mention of mourning I could find was that of the Princess Charlotte on behalf of her father’s cousin, the Duke of Brunswick.(Shown left)

As for the soldiers who finally made their way home – they were left to fend for themselves.
To end this story in a far less sophisticated town – Bury St Edmund’s – there is a rather charming report in the local Bury and Norwich Post recording that, “The glorious news of Lord Wellington’s Victory over Bonaparte was first received here on Thursday evening, amidst the most general joy; and which was most happily confirmed on the arrival of the mail at six the next morning; when by the vigilance of our most worthy postmaster the several newspapers were instantly delivered throughout the town and its vicinity.”

New coverI became intrigued by the tourists who flocked to the battlefield from the day after the battle. The story of this phenomenon is told in the words of six of them – the Poet Laureate, a lady travel writer, a schoolmaster, a journalist, a friend of Sir Walter Scott’s and an adventurous young man – in To the Field of Waterloo: the First Battlefield Tourists 1815-1816. 

 

3 Comments

Filed under Battle of Waterloo, Books, Entertainment, High Society, Military, Napoleon, Waterloo, Wellington

Tagged as , , , , ,

November 10, 2019 · 12:00 pm

An English Poet in Georgian Malta

On my holidays this year I seem to have been bumping into the long arm of the Georgian navy at every turn. In August and September I wrote about encounters in Canada with Queen Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent, and uncle, William IV when he was a naval officer. Last month I visited Malta and, standing in front of the Grand Master’s Palace in the heart of Valletta, found myself looking up at an unmistakable coat of arms on the opposite side of St George’s Square.

Even without seeing the date of 1814, this is clearly a Georgian coat of arms with the white horse of the house of Hanover as the other supporter with the British lion. So what was it doing there? I should have remembered that Malta was one of the Mediterranean islands that fell to the British after the defeat of the French navy at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Translated the motto reads: “The love of the Maltese and the voice of Europe assigned these Islands to great and unconquered Britain. A.D. 1814.” No shortage of self-confidence there…

The Grand Harbour is one of the greatest harbours of the world, as the Knights of St John who had governed Malta for hundreds of years appreciated. In 1798 the French ousted the Knights and took over the supremely strategic island and even after the Battle of the Nile the French clung on to Malta, with some of the surviving ships of the fleet sheltering in the harbour. The British navy promptly blockaded the island. They were helped by the Maltese population who, although they were weary of the Knights’ rule, seem to have liked the French even less. In September 1800 the French ships tried to break out and were captured and the island fell. In 1814, the date on the coat of arms, Malta became a British colony, finally achieving independence in 1964.

Throughout history Malta has been of huge strategic importance in the Mediterranean which has made it all too often the target of fierce fighting – notably under the Knights and during the Second World War where its population endured the most appalling conditions and were awarded the George Cross as a tribute to their courage. With the arrival of the British in 1800 the island found an unexpected peace and prosperity. British merchants came in droves and it became an invaluable distribution point for British exports and the harbour and the presence of the fleet created huge commercial and employment opportunities. Not all was sweetness and light – the history of Anglo-Maltese relations is too complex to explore here – but the British presence for over 160 years has left a deep impression on the island.

The Grand Master’s Palace (below) became the seat of government and the residence of the British Governor.

Opposite is the Main Guard Building (below) which was built by the Knights in 1603 as the guardhouse for the Palace. The neo-classical portico was added, along with the coat of arms, in 1814.

So what was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, perhaps now most famous for his poems The Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, to do with this? To my surprise I found a plaque to him on a building on the corner of St George’s Square. Apparently, in 1804, despite health problems and an increasing opium addiction, he travelled to Sicily and then to Malta where he found a post as Acting Public Secretary under the Civil Commissioner, Sir Alexander Bell. Despite being successful in the role he resigned and returned to England in 1806.

 

5 Comments

Filed under Buildings, Military, Napoleon, Travel

Tagged as , , , , , ,

February 8, 2019 · 11:17 am

From India to Fulham – On the Track of a Love Story

Some time ago I bought a battered little book from an on-line auction site for a few pounds. It measures approximately 8 x 6.5 inches (10 x 6 cm), the cover was battered and the thin spine had given way completely. The pages inside were loose and covered in handwriting in ink that, in places, had faded badly.

whole thing

Many pages were difficult to read but I saw at a glance that it was what I had hoped – a book of household recipes and hints  that some careful 19th century housewife had collected. But who was she and when did she keep her notebook?

Inside one cover was “9, High Row 60£” and “G.G.Mills Esq, North End Terrace, Fulham”.  Somehow I didn’t think that Mr Mills himself was carefully collecting recipes for raspberry vinegar or fish sauce. The other cover, amidst various scribbled notes, had, “Mrs Bernard Ryan”, the date 31st August 1812 and “Kensington Wilds Library Hornton St.” There was also a strip that had been torn from a letter and stuck in with instructions for restoring the lustre to silverware written on it. The letter had been addressed to Mrs Mills. The glue obscures the notes in the top left hand corner of the inside cover but it is possible to read “1819 Sept 21st”, “G.G.M 10th Dec 1819” and very faintly below that “To make good curry.”

inside cover

So, I had a Regency housewife’s notebook – but if this belonged to Mrs Mills, who was Mrs Bernard Ryan? And why had someone apparently tried to copy Mrs Bernard Ryan’s name in wobbly handwriting above it as “Mrs Renard Ry”? A child, perhaps?

I began with the library by digging in on-line newspaper indexes and soon found that F. P. Wild’s Library at 8, Hornton Street, Kensington appears in newspaper advertisements for newly-published books  between 1816 and 1825. It seemed I was definitely dealing with someone living in London

Then I turned to genealogy websites and discovered that a George Gillam Mills was resident at North End Terrace, Fulham when he died in May 1844 aged 74. He was buried in the District Chapel of the Parish of St Mary’s, North End, Fulham on 17th May. I tried to find North End Terrace on maps but could not pin-point it but but North End Road joins Hammersmith Road just where St Mary’s Chapel, now a church, stands. It seems likely that it was at the northern end of the road that Jean and George lived. Until the late 19th century North End was a scattered hamlet of houses along North End Road surrounded by fields and market gardens and included many substantial properties and villas owned by prosperous middle class and aristocratic families.

Now I knew Mr Mills’ first names I could chase him further and found that on the 15th May 1815 he had married Jean Ryan, a widow, at St Luke’s, Chelsea. They had married by licence and on the bond which he signed to obtain the licence George stated that he was over twenty one years of age, unmarried and living in the parish. It seemed highly likely that Jean Ryan was the Mrs Bernard Ryan named on the inside cover of the book.

I was able to find George’s christening record at St Alfege’s church in Greenwich on 24th November 1771 with the note that he had been born that month. His parents were Samuel Gillam Mills, a surgeon, and Catherine. So George was from a middle class home and was forty four when he married Jean Ryan.

Could I find ‘Jean’ marrying a Barnard Ryan? To my delight I found that on 26 August 1805 Lieutenant Bernard Ryan married Miss Jean Forbes in Secunderabad in British controlled India. But sadly the marriage lasted only six years. He died, a Captain in the 12th Regiment of Native Infantry of the Honourable East India Company, aged twenty eight and was buried 17th October 1811 at Fort William in Calcutta (now Kolkata). His will leaves everything to his wife Jean.

This image of the fort is from 1754, but it must have looked very much like this when the Ryans knew it, and having seen it when in Kolkata myself, it is still recognisable today.

Fort_William 1754

In September 1812 the records of the Lord Clive Military Fund Pensions Committee in the Madras (now Chennai) Presidency show that a pension of two shillings and four pence a day was granted to Mrs Jean Ryan, widow. Soon after this she must have set sail for England, a voyage of perhaps a year unless she was very lucky with the weather.

How did the widowed Mrs Ryan meet Mr Mills? How old was she? That at least I could answer because her burial record for 19th March 1825 gives her age as only forty. She had been twenty when she married Bernard and thirty when she married George. But her second marriage to a man fourteen years her senior seems to have been a happy one  because below a recipe for stewing flounders she wrote: “13th April 1820 – recd. a New Crown Piece from Darling Husband. Keep Sake.”

What happened to George? He was a prosperous businessman and civil servant, it seems. In 1815 he was Cashier of Half-Pay at the Army Pay Office in Whitehall and in 1819 had been promoted two steps up to Ledger Keeper. The Royal Kalendar and Court and City Register for 1817 and 1819 lists him as one of the directors and an auditor of the British Fire Office, “for assuring Houses, Goods and Ships” located at Cornhill in the City. How did he pass the nineteen years of widowerhood? I hope he had a good housekeeper who cooked him some of the familiar recipes from Jean’s notebook.

The notebook itself has a wide selection of recipes with notes on who gave them to her, a good selection of curries – not surprisingly perhaps – and notes on everything from making mistletoe grow to polishing a mahogany table. I transcribed the whole book and Mock Oyster Sauce and a Cure For Corns: A Regency Lady’s Receipt Book is out in April but available to pre-order now.

Cover 2

 

12 Comments

Filed under Domestic life, Food & drink, Military

Tagged as , , , ,

May 14, 2016 · 11:27 am

The Earl of Wittering Plans His Summer

This May morning in 1816 the Gatwick family gather around the breakfast table in the Small Dining Room of their vast Mayfair mansion. It is obvious that the head of the family, the Earl of Wittering, has something on his mind, although the Countess of Wittering supposes it is only his bowels troubling him again. Like most of the upper classes of his age his diet – heavy on meat and alcohol, low on fruit and vegetables – means that his lordship frequently feels liverish, or to put it more bluntly, he’s appallingly constipated. She makes a mental note to send off another order to Savory & Moore, chemists (by Royal Appointment) in New Bond Street. (Shown below) Thomas Field Savory is making his fortune after acquiring the patent for internationally best-selling laxative, Seidlitz powders but, naturally, she does not mention such a subject at the meal table.

028

The Countess would much rather finish her toast and return to her sitting room where she is putting the final touches to a highly imaginative, and exceedingly dramatic, sketch of an Alpine pass. What she would really like would be to paint the sea. Ever since she read Edmund Burke’s tract On the Sublime and the Beautiful and learned that the ocean was “an object of no small terror” she has been fascinated by it.

On either side of the breakfast table sit the Earl’s heir, the Viscount Ditherstone (coughing, as is his irritating habit at breakfast) and his wife, flanked by their children, seventeen year old Emily and twelve year old Arthur. Ditherstone, ever tactless, enquires if there is anything on his father’s mind.

Porrett, the earl’s secretary has, it transpires, been making enquiries about his lordship’s intentions for the summer so that he can begin to put in place the arrangements and, for once, Lord Wittering is undecided. Normally, after the London Season the family embark on a lengthy round of summer visits to the far-flung branches of the family, their travels greatly eased by the splendid condition of the network of turnpike roads across the country. The tour would always culminate in two weeks spent toadying to his elderly, terrifying and exceedingly wealthy aunts. But the aunts had died that winter, their money left, as he had always desired, to their godson, Master Gatwick, the future earl. Now his lordship wonders if he really wants to spend three months travelling about before he can retire to his country estate for the autumn and set about slaughtering anything with fur, feathers or fins. What he would like to do is recover his health in a spa, as his father would have done, but Bath is hopelessly dull these days, quite out of fashion.

“Perhaps we should take a house at a seaside resort,” ventures his daughter-in-law. “I am sure the pure air would be a benefit to Ditherstone’s lungs.” Ever since she read that amusing novel Emma she has not been able to forget the phrase, The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. And was it not the case that the great Mr Wordsworth was only able to write his beautiful verses “Upon Westminster Bridge” The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air… because he was amazed to find, for once, the atmosphere free of polluting smoke?

Ditherstone himself perks up. He rather fancies a dip or two in the briny. He’s heard exciting stories about the ladies bathing and what they might, or might not wear, to say nothing of amorous encounters in bathing rooms. And all kinds of dashers visit the seaside, so his bachelor friends tell him.

“Oh, Grandpapa,” Emily breathes. “I would love to go to the seaside.” She bats her eyelashes. “The south coast, they say, is so warm and quite delightful.” And, facing the enemy France, as it does, it is stuffed with troops. All those officers in scarlet coats. Oh, the opportunities for flirtation. (Below: tourists admire the militia parading at Cromer in Norfolk)

Cromer militia

Young Arthur extracts his nose from a scientific journal – he is showing an alarming tendency (in his grandfather’s opinion) towards natural philosophy and not manly sports. “The south coast, it said in a paper I was reading the other day, has much of interest to the fossilist and the mineralogist. I would like to go.”

The Earl glowers down the table. He doesn’t like change. On the other The Georgian Seaside Cover_MEDIUM WEBhand the sea-water cure sounds as though it would be helpful for what ails him. His wife keeps leaving prints of craggy cliffs and tossing waves about, so he supposes it would keep her happy and the rest of the family seemed keen enough. He would think on it.

What will the earl decide? Will the Gatwicks go to the seaside and, if so, to which resort? You can follow their summer adventures here over the next few months and read about the vibrant world of the early English seaside holiday (definitely not a Victorian invention!) in  The Georgian Seaside: the English resorts before the railways came.

Meanwhile, now the smog has gone, you can find Savory & Moore’s shop for yourself in Walk 2, Walking Jane vis1Band admire Wordsworth’s view in Walk 6, of Walking Jane Austen’s London

8 Comments

Filed under Buildings, Entertainment, Gentlemen, High Society, Medicine & health, Military, Seaside resorts, Travel

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

August 18, 2015 · 9:00 am

Protecting the Hanoverian Kings From the Jacobites

 

16-DSCN9509

My blog today is set a very long way north of London, but its subject – Fort George on Scotland’s Moray Firth – must have represented a great comfort to Londoners recovering from the shock of the ’45, Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s attempt to regain the throne of his grandfather, James VII of Scotland, II of England.
Charles, known as the Young Pretender or, more romantically as Bonnie Prince Charlie, had led his troops as far south as Derbyshire, causing widespread panic throughout England before he retreated back to Scotland with the realisation that the expected English support was not going to be forthcoming.
The forces of George II in London reacted with brutal force. Charles’s army was slaughtered in the Battle of Culloden in less than an hour on 16th April 1746 and the Young Pretender fled, the hopes of the Stuarts fleeing with him.
The government was not going to take any more chances with Jacobite sympathies in Scotland and put in place an ambitious plan to extend the military roads across the country and to build fortifications that would ensure a rising could never happen again.

14-DSCN9502
The old Fort George in Inverness had proved inadequate against the Jacobites and the town council was objecting strongly to having two thousand “wild and licentious” soldiery located in the heart of their respectable town, so the new fort was eventually located on a spit of land jutting out into the Moray Firth at Ardesier, a safe eleven miles away from Inverness’s citizens and commanding an excellent strategic position guarding the mouth of the Firth.
Fort George was begun in 1748, planned by Lieutenant-General William Skinner and built under the direction of the architectural dynasty of the Adams family – father William (who had worked on Edinburgh Castle), then son John and eventually even John’s brother Robert Adam, one of Britain’s most famous and fashionable architects.15-DSCN9504
The 42 acre fort cost £200,000, equivalent to £20 million now and more than Scotland’s entire GNP for 1750. It only ever saw one shot fired in anger – and that was by a panicky night-time guard firing on a cow that was approaching the outer defences. As a result the fort appears almost exactly as it did when it was completed and it is one of the most impressive fortifications of the period in Europe. To add to the atmosphere for the modern visitor it is still in use for troops who have been accommodated into the historic fort without adding to, or damaging, the original building.

18-DSCN9513
Today one can view the complex and seemingly impregnable series of outer walls, bastions and moats, designed to put any attacker under withering cross-fire.

22-DSCN9537Inside the walls the buildings are handsome and impressive, from the Governor’s house to the barracks (still in use for their original purpose, although with fewer men in each large room and more modern heating and plumbing!) to the gunpowder magazine, the stores and the simple chapel.

20-DSCN9523The recreated corner of one of the barrack rooms shows the draped blanket that was the only privacy a married couple had in a room sleeping eight men. In contrast one of the senior officers enjoys a room to himself with larger window panes and a smart fireplace. 21-DSCN9525

24-DSCN9540 The chapel contains many standards of regiments who have been stationed at Fort George, some of them from the early 19th century. The icing on the cake for me was the re-enactor in the dress of the original Scottish regiments garrisoned there who allowed me to try out all his weapons, including his musket and whose tales of the fort really brought it to life.

19-DSCN9520

5 Comments

Filed under Architecture, Buildings, Military

Tagged as , , , , , ,