Ticking them off one by one -- Hever Castle

Last Sunday we went to Hever Castle in Kent for the day.

There's not much of the castle, as a castle, left -- the only original part is the medieval gatehouse and parts of its two flanking towers -- and it was reconstructed in the late fifteenth century as a country manor by Geoffrey Bullen, the grandfather of Anne Boleyn....a name which points to the reason for the castle's notability. Much of what one sees there today (apart from the exterior work) is the product of the restoration undertaken before the First World War by the wealthy American William Waldorf Astor, indulging his love of things European and medieval to create a neo-period family residence. (On the other hand, if you had the money you'd probably indulge that sort of fancy, too.) He also laid out the present grounds, transforming empty meadows into a series of gardens and a boating lake with a loggia and a fountain modelled on the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

We bought a guidebook, we visited the castle, we strolled through the gardens and (to finish) walked around the lake. We also made a short visit to St Peter's Church in Hever village, where Thomas Boleyn is buried, before catching the train back to London. Here are some photographs: of Thomas Boleyn's tomb chest in St Peter's Church (you will note that the carvings are in very poor repair, and that brick has been used to support part of the chest); a general view of the castle itself from the southwest, showing the medieval gatehouse and the exterior walls of the late medieval manor behind it; part of the Tudor gardens; a view of part of the rose garden, with the Wugster at far right, in the distance, about to thrust her proboscis into a flower (note also the yellowness of the grass, thanks to the summer drought -- something which is almost unheard of in these parts, doncha know); and a view of the loggia from across the lake.

Crystal Palace Dinosaurs

Yesterday afternoon we ticked off another in our list of places to visit: the Victorian replica dinosaurs at Crystal Palace in south London.

We had first tried to visit these sometime in the late 1990s, but found them off-limits because they were "awaiting restoration" -- i.e., had fallen into disrepair, but the money to conserve them and prevent further deterioration had not been forthcoming. It seemed that they were fated to moulder away entirely, but then the otherwise supine Bromley council -- the same Bromley council that had destroyed Ken Livingstone's cheap tube fares policy in the 1980s, and thus a favourite of Margaret Thatcher's -- woke up, realised what a tourist-attracting heritage item it had on its hands, and put together a funding bid. The dinosaurs were duly restored, re-opened to public access in 2003, and in 2007 were given Grade I listed status: the highest level of national listing.

As models of extinct creatures, they are in many respects very inaccurate -- the ichthyosaurus, for example, is depicted as able to come onto land to lay eggs, whereas it was wholly aquatic and gave birth to live young; the iguanadon and the megalosaur look more like dogs than lizards; the dicynodon has a shell like a turtle, whereas it is now thought to have looked more like a hippopotamus -- but they have been restored as they appeared to their Victorian builders not just because of their historical value but because of the insight they provide into the history of palaeontology itself: what the people of the time thought about the past, based on their understanding on the fossils then available.

Wikipedia's article on the Crystal Palace dinosaurs gives more information about them and their history, so I won't repeat that here. (Mind you, there doesn't seem to be much information about them anywhere else online.) In the meantime, here are some photographs, of -- in order -- the megalosaurus; a pair of iguanadons; two labyrinthodons (with people in the background for scale); the ichthyosaurus; and the megatherium. The tree the megatherium is hugging is original to the construction of the models; it is now dead, but because it continued growing after they were installed it eventually broke off the creature's left arm; if you examine the picture closely, you can see that the replacement arm is of a different colour.

(P.S. Nerdy travel note: we got to Crystal Palace by the recently re-opened and extended East London line -- so recently re-opened, in fact, that it's only just posted its first quarter's punctuality statistics. The line has also been rebranded, as part of the new London Overground network, grouping together a number of "orphan" routes which help fill the gaps between other services. We thoroughly approve.)