The main reason for my trip to Arundel was to visit the castle. I’d seen a video online which inspired me to research more about it and once I saw how easy it was to reach by train I was sold. I will say though that as a visitor and from the ground there is no real way of seeing the whole place in its glory (other than on approach by train) as it is surrounded by trees but the gardens and interiors more than made up for it.
Back in May we headed to Belvoir Castle in Grantham, Lincolnshire, for my birthday. Despite the fact that it’s only a half hour drive from Nottingham I hadn’t managed to visit until now.
On leaving Gwydir Castle I was heading back towards Llanrwst when I spotted some stone steps leading up the side of a hill opposite. Intrigued I decided to investigate. It lead me up a steep winding path through dense trees with birds that I heard but couldn’t see singing all around me.
Part of an ongoing series, here are some doors from Liverpool. The first is the door of the Octagon Chapel which dates from 1763.
The Memorial Chapel at the University of Glasgow can, in normal times, be visited every weekday from 9 till 5 and when I visited I had the whole place to myself for a few minutes before more people came in. It was completed in 1929 to serve as a memorial for members of the university who had died in both World Wars and interestingly both Protestant, Catholic and humanist marriages can take place there.
The chapel was designed by John James Burnet around 1913 but building was delayed by the outbreak of the First World War. It’s not surprisingly a small building but a lovely space nonetheless and has some wonderful stained glass windows designed and made by Douglas Strachan. He died before he could install all the windows he’d designed, so these were worked on by others from the 1950s to the 1960s.
Fitzrovia Chapel is another place I visited as part of Open House London last year, somewhere that had been on my radar since seeing some pictures on Instagram, and I was pleased to have my expectations exceeded. Designed by John Loughborough Pearson in 1891 it was built as a tranquil space for the staff and former patients of Middlesex Hospital but by the time the chapel was finished and opened in 1929 the hospital had been demolished.
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Beaumaris Castle on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales was another castle, like Caernarfon to be built by Edward I. Construction began in 1295 but stopped around 1300 with the castle unfinished.
Please note photos have been removed due to lack of hosting space.
On a spectacularly sunny day in June a friend and I visited Brockhampton Estate, a National Trust site in Herefordshire. The Estate features a moated manor house and gatehouse surrounded by a 1,700 acre estate.
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