England

Lotherton: Wildlife World

Lotherton is an Edwardian house and country estate with gardens, extensive grounds, a deer park and a small zoo. When I first visited back in 2013 you couldn’t take photos inside the house and Wildlife World was originally a bird garden. Much has changed since then however and I’m splitting these posts into the zoo, the house, the chapel and the gardens, starting with our first destination of the zoo. There is still more of a concentration on birds here than on the animals they’ve since acquired and one of my favourites was this lovely Edward’s pheasant, named after a former director of the Natural History Museum in Paris.

Continue reading
Categories: England, Leeds, Yorkshire | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Special Operations Executive Memorial, London

The Special Operations Executive, headquartered in London, was formed in the Second World War to secretly recruit men and women who would perform acts of sabotage in countries occupied by Germany. The lengths that these brave men and women went through is truly remarkable and I’ve read a fair few biographies of some of the women recruited – I’d recommend A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell.

Continue reading
Categories: England, London | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Burghley House: The Sculpture Garden

Covering 12 acres that was reclaimed from scrub woodland, the sculpture garden at Burghley House contains a vast array of contemporary sculptures, some of which are considerably stranger than others! Some of my favourites are highlighted below.

Continue reading
Categories: England, Lincolnshire | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Burghley House: Garden of Surprises

Opened in 2007 the Garden of Surprises was influenced by the garden that William Cecil, the first owner of Burghley House, had created in his Hertfordshire home, Theobalds. It was common for Elizabethan gardens to have “tricks” such as mazes, statues, grottos, concealed water pipes to shoot out water etc. all of which can be found in this modern version.

Continue reading
Categories: England, Lincolnshire | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

Throwback Thursday: Exchange Newsroom War Memorial, Liverpool

This is another monument that stands in a recess of Exchange Flags. The statue is a memorial to the members of the Liverpool Exchange Newsroom who died during the First World War and depicts soldiers ready for battle and a nurse tending to a wounded soldier. Britannia is above overseeing events.

Continue reading
Categories: England, Liverpool, Merseyside | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Burghley House

For my birthday back in May we paid a visit to Burghley House and Gardens (the Garden of Surprises and the Sculpture Garden will feature in future posts). Built to impress, the house was the work of William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley and Treasurer to Elizabeth I and is still home to his descendants today.

Continue reading
Categories: England, Lincolnshire | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

Throwback Thursday: Nelson Monument, Liverpool

The Nelson Monument stands in the open area in front of Exchange Flags. It’s an imposing and rather striking creation, crowded with figures of a soldier, angel and skeleton as well as Nelson himself on top, with four chained people depicted below. It was sculpted by Sir Richard Westmacott with a design by Matthew Cotes Wyatt and was unveiled in 1813, making it the first public sculpture to be erected in the city.

Continue reading
Categories: England, Liverpool, Merseyside | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

St Leonard’s Church, Rockingham Village

St Leonard’s is the parish church of Rockingham Village and sits just below the walls of the castle – it is open to visitors on days when the castle is open to the public. There was probably a chapel inside the castle in the 11th century and in the 15th century a church on the site of the present building was destroyed in the Civil War; the present church dates to 1650.

Continue reading
Categories: England, Northamptonshire | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Throwback Thursday: Exchange Flags, Liverpool

A Grade II listed building Exchange Flags is an office complex and restaurant space in the centre of Liverpool’s commercial district. The name of the building reflects the city’s history in regards to slavery – cotton traders and brokers would meet here to do their buying and selling and exchange a form of business card, hence the name.

Continue reading
Categories: England, Liverpool, Merseyside | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Rockingham Castle Gardens

The gardens at Rockingham Castle are made up of several different terraces that are divided from the plain Terraced Lawn directly in front of the castle building by the Elephant Hedge – so called because they are sculpted to look like a row of elephants.

Continue reading
Categories: England, Northamptonshire | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Blog at WordPress.com.