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22 April 2009
Greenwich National Maritime Museum and The Queen's House
 On the site of the Tudor palace of Placentia there now
stands the former Royal Navy College with its Painted Hall
and Chapel, the Maritime Museum and the Queen’s House. The
Maritime Museum charts Britain’s seafaring history from the
16th Century to the early 20th Century including a new
gallery exploring the interrelationships between Britain,
Africa and the Americas. Among other themes there are also
galleries which trace Maritime London and Nelson’s Navy.
The Queen’s House, designed by Inigo Jones and England’s
first classical building, was a gift by Charles I to his
wife Henrietta Maria who called it ‘her palace of delights’.
The outstanding features include the Great Hall – a perfect
cube the height of the Building - and the ‘Tulip Staircase’
– the first self supporting spiral stairs in Britain. It now
provides an elegant setting for fine paintings
(Gainsborough, Lely, Hogarth & Reynolds) and many other
historical artefacts.
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14 July 2009
Salisbury Cathedral & Wilton House
 Arguably Britain’s finest 13th Century cathedral,
Salisbury celebrated the 750th Anniversary of its completion
in 2008.Our guided tour will give us a full appreciation of
this magnificent building which also has the best preserved
original Magna Carta and the oldest working clock (1386) in
Europe.
Wilton House has been the ancestral home of the Earl of
Pembroke for 460 years when Henry VIII took the original
Abbey and lands and gave them to Sir William Herbert, the
husband of Catherine Parr’s sister. After a fire, the house
was rebuilt by Inigo Jones in the Palladian style. The chief
architectural features include the magnificent State
Apartments, the famous single and double cubes and the 19th
century cloisters.
The house contains one of the finest
collections in Europe with 230 paintings on display
including works by Van Dyke, Rubens, Joshua Reynolds and Bruegel. In the landscape gardens is the majestic Palladian
bridge over the River Nadder and fours new gardens created
by the 17th Earl in1969 – the Northern Forecourt,
the Old
English Rose, Water and Cloister gardens.
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13 October 2009
Southwark Walk, Southwark Cathedral and The Globe Theatre
Southwark, located on the South Bank of the Thames and
outside the jurisdiction of the City of London, was for
centuries infamous rather than famous. Londoners crossed the
river to enjoy pursuits the City Fathers frowned on. It also
included the sites of the Clink and Marshalsea prisons, the
latter being very familiar to us from Dickens’ Little Dorrit.
We shall explore the former industrial area of Bermondsey
and hear about Mr Thomas Guy and his hospital. Southwark
Cathedral is architecturally one of the most important
churches is London and once included Shakespeare in its
congregation. We shall then visit the site of the original
Globe Theatre before a guided tour of the reconstructed
Globe which vividly evokes the experience of the Elizabethan
theatre.
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Looking down
on Southwark Cathedral from the 24th Floor |
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