Schoolmarm
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- edgworth, lancs
..............She is now famous!
http://www.sal.org.uk/salon/
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Salon’s appeal in the last issue for the author of the Confessions of a Conservation Officer blog to come out from the pile of paperwork under which he has been buried, and blog again has succeeded! The CO writes to say ‘thank you to the Society of Antiquaries for noticing’, and has posted up his latest thoughts, which make very sad reading, on the fate of Greaves Hall at Banks near Southport, a Grade II listed Tudor Revival house, with multiple gables and patterned timber framing imitating the local vernacular, which has deteriorated to the point where it is likely to be demolished following recent fire damage and vandalism, while the surrounding land is developed for housing. From the CO’s blog, you can also hop to the blog called Nemesis Republic, written by someone who describes himself as a Grumpy Old Blogger, but then disproves that description with a fine tribute to the late U A Fanthorpe, one of the truly great poets of our time, who should in all justice have been the first female Poet Laureate, and who died on 30 April 2009, a day before Carol Ann Duffy was confirmed as Andrew Motion’s successor in that post. Nemesis heads his tribute with a picture of Kelmscott Manor and then quotes Fanthorpe’s 2003 poem, A Wish for William Morris, which begins with this lyrical description of Kelmscott:
I’d have let him die here
That great lover of things
In the place he loved best.
Not graceless Hammersmith
That he healed in his book
But in the old manor,
Kelmscott by the river,
Where the bed was ready,
That he wrote the verse for,
May curtained, Jane sewed for,
With grass scent, late rose scent,
Invading the window,
Distant shouting of sheep,
A bravura blackbird,
Always his true love Thames .
Worth book-marking and visiting regularly, Nemesis Republic ranges widely over heritage matters and is a corrective to popular opinion: observing, for example, that last week’s fly-on-the-wall documentary on English Heritage presented Apethorpe as if it were a vanity project on the part of Fellow Simon Thurley, when ‘the reality is that we have laws and planning policies in this country which are too often not put into operation, and here was a long-standing problem, a house of exceptional quality left neglected and seriously at risk. Repair orders were ignored, and the inexorable march of the long arm of the law meant that in the end the DCMS had no option other than to step in and take it into state ownership.’
(An informal straw poll taken before the Society’s weekly lecture on 30 April suggests that the majority of Fellows would like to see the fruitless search for a private owner for Apethorpe abandoned in favour of opening this magnificent house to the public as part of the English Heritage property portfolio.)
http://www.sal.org.uk/salon/
Feedback
Salon’s appeal in the last issue for the author of the Confessions of a Conservation Officer blog to come out from the pile of paperwork under which he has been buried, and blog again has succeeded! The CO writes to say ‘thank you to the Society of Antiquaries for noticing’, and has posted up his latest thoughts, which make very sad reading, on the fate of Greaves Hall at Banks near Southport, a Grade II listed Tudor Revival house, with multiple gables and patterned timber framing imitating the local vernacular, which has deteriorated to the point where it is likely to be demolished following recent fire damage and vandalism, while the surrounding land is developed for housing. From the CO’s blog, you can also hop to the blog called Nemesis Republic, written by someone who describes himself as a Grumpy Old Blogger, but then disproves that description with a fine tribute to the late U A Fanthorpe, one of the truly great poets of our time, who should in all justice have been the first female Poet Laureate, and who died on 30 April 2009, a day before Carol Ann Duffy was confirmed as Andrew Motion’s successor in that post. Nemesis heads his tribute with a picture of Kelmscott Manor and then quotes Fanthorpe’s 2003 poem, A Wish for William Morris, which begins with this lyrical description of Kelmscott:
I’d have let him die here
That great lover of things
In the place he loved best.
Not graceless Hammersmith
That he healed in his book
But in the old manor,
Kelmscott by the river,
Where the bed was ready,
That he wrote the verse for,
May curtained, Jane sewed for,
With grass scent, late rose scent,
Invading the window,
Distant shouting of sheep,
A bravura blackbird,
Always his true love Thames .
Worth book-marking and visiting regularly, Nemesis Republic ranges widely over heritage matters and is a corrective to popular opinion: observing, for example, that last week’s fly-on-the-wall documentary on English Heritage presented Apethorpe as if it were a vanity project on the part of Fellow Simon Thurley, when ‘the reality is that we have laws and planning policies in this country which are too often not put into operation, and here was a long-standing problem, a house of exceptional quality left neglected and seriously at risk. Repair orders were ignored, and the inexorable march of the long arm of the law meant that in the end the DCMS had no option other than to step in and take it into state ownership.’
(An informal straw poll taken before the Society’s weekly lecture on 30 April suggests that the majority of Fellows would like to see the fruitless search for a private owner for Apethorpe abandoned in favour of opening this magnificent house to the public as part of the English Heritage property portfolio.)