Skip to main content

Tutbury Castle

After living in Texas for a while, where any building dating back to 1900 is really old, and most of the cities were open prairie not 200 years ago, it has lent a certain depth to life to be back in a country where the dust of history clings to your shoes at every step.  Where the parks are centred on crumbling manor houses, the villages were mentioned in the Domesday book of 1086, and the public toilets are probably prehistoric.  Any given circle of, say, a 20 mile radius is likely to encompass more than a smattering of stone monuments, ancient churches, medieval field systems and such like (as carefully noted on the incomparable Ordnance Survey maps), and the circle centred on our current residence is no exception.  Amongst other things it includes Tutbury Castle, to which we journeyed one cold and sunny April morning.

The entrance
According to their website, the site has been occupied since the Stone Age, which makes it old in anyone's book.  However, it wasn't until the 11th century that the Normans came along with their "I'm bigger and better than you, and besides, I speak French" castle-building mania, and quelled the locals by sticking a fortification on top of the hill.  In the following years the castle was destroyed and rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt again, and finally left as a romantic ruin.  Whereupon, this being Britain, someone opened a tea shop in it.  Can't have a romantic ruin without a cup of tea and a nice currant bun, now can you?

Tea shop in the building on the left
Toby was much enamoured of the steps: some cut into the side of the hill which he took at a run, and a spiral stone staircase to be carefully navigated holding Dad's hand.



Historical step graffiti
He also attempted to reconstruct the 12th-century chapel, but was hampered by lack of materials.


You lost a shoe!
The best part of living in a castle must have been the views, which in this case were stunning.  Hauling the weekly grocery shop up the hill must have been a bit of a pain, and by all accounts the insulation was rather substandard.  Mary Queen of Scots certainly thought so, when she was imprisoned at Tutbury; and they carefully made sure her windows faced the courtyard, so she didn't even get the view to compensate.  I don't suppose those pretty little gardens were there then, either.





Well, that's one historical monument ticked off the list.  I guess it's the medieval field system next.  Don't think anyone's opened a tea shop there yet, though.
Labels:

Comments

Susan Ewing said…
How sweet, little Toby climbing the steps of that old place! Amazing history! And great writing, Martha.
For some reason, it seems nice to know you're back in England...where you belong? ;) Glad you're baking again, or still.
4 May 2013 at 20:33
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Growing things

For those of you who are interested in my attempts at balcony gardening, I thought I'd update you a little. For those who aren't, don't skip this post. You may find something else of interest. Apart from the ever-present herbs, tomatoes and cayenne peppers are on the go this year. The peppers are really on the go - we went away for a week and came back to find them twice the size as when we left. Now they're producing fruit which is growing at a similarly rapid rate, though none has ripened to red yet. I realised I should have given you some kind of scale, so I just went out and measured. They're about 22 cm long, or 8 1/2 inches for you non-metric types. I may have to find out how to dry peppers if they all ripen at once. A couple of tomato plants are looking pretty healthy and beginning to flower. A few died; one, apparently, by being eaten whole by a bird, a trouble I've never had before. I had two seedlings left so used those as replacements, b...
2 comments
Read more

The Normal Christian Life: Spiritual Formation Book 1

"I have never met a soul who has set out to satisfy the Lord and has not been satisfied himself.  It is impossible."   The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee is the first of my four books for spiritual formation that I'm reading this year.  Watchman Nee was a Chinese Christian who was converted in 1920 and was able to spend many years in preaching and evangelism.  However, after the Communist revolution he was imprisoned, and died in jail 20 years later.  The Normal Christian Life is based on talks he gave in Europe in the 1930's. What are the main themes of this book? Nee starts by saying that it's possible that the normal Christian life has never been lived by anyone except Jesus - which is hardly an encouraging beginning!  He then goes on to outline his view of such a life, using the book of Romans as a guide.   He certainly sets a high bar: for Nee, the normal Christian life is based on a knowledge and experience of death to our old self...
Post a Comment
Read more