United States or Côte d'Ivoire ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Men of letters were familiar to him in every degree. Among the houses where he was a frequent and welcome guest were Knowsley, Highclere, Tortworth, and Castle Howard. In his own family there were troubles and bereavements. His eldest son, who died before him, gave him much trouble and anxiety.
The first, third, fifth, and all odd steps are to be trusted, but to tread any of the others is to set in motion some concealed machinery which causes the staircase to collapse, disclosing a vault some seventy feet in depth, down which the unwary are precipitated." Similar passages were found some years ago while making alterations to Highclere Castle Hampshire.
Once a favourite residence of the Bishops of Winchester, the Castle passed to the Crown in the sixteenth century and then, after purchase by Sir Robert Sawyer, to the Herberts by intermarriage with the last-named knight's family. Highclere Church is a new building designed by Sir Gilbert Scott and stands just outside the park.
This counter-revolution had been accomplished before I knew him, and my intimate acquaintance with him began at a great shooting party given at Highclere Castle by Lord Carnarvon, his brother.
Besides the instances I have already given, and many others which I may have forgotten, he was heard of, during the earlier part of this decade, as the guest of Lord Carnarvon at Highclere Castle, of Lord Shrewsbury at Alton Towers, of Lord Brownlow and his mother, Lady Marian Alford, at Belton and Ashridge.
Next morning that memorable fog lifted, to England's joy, and quitting my refuge I went out once more into the region of high sheep-walks, adorned with beechen woods and traveller's-joy in the hedges, rambling by Highclere, Burghclere, and Kingsclere.
Highclere Park and Castle form a show-place of the first rank; the park being beyond all praise. The slopes of the Downs and some of their summits are within this beautiful domain of the Earls of Carnarvon.
My clothes were hoary with clinging mist, my fingers numb with cold, and Highclere, its scattered cottages appearing like dim smudges through the whiteness, was the dreariest village on earth. I fled on to Newbury in quest of warmth and light, and found it indoors, but the town was deep in the fog.
On the Highclere road, about a mile out of Newbury, stands the monument to this noble and pathetic figure, whose heart seems to have been broken by the wretched times in which he lived.
This is something for an Englishman to be proud of. After spending two hours at Crux Easton, with that dense immovable fog close by, I at length took the plunge to get to Highclere. What a change! I was at once where all form and colour and melody had been blotted out.
Word Of The Day