North Norfolk - Holiday June 2021 - Coming up for air after lockdowns

  North Norfolk - Holiday June 2021 - Coming up for air after lockdowns

 

Mannington Hall, Norfolk

Holidays in the era of Covid

Our previous holiday was in late 2019, now nineteen months ago. We flew to a baptism in Switzerland and returned, in five days. The easy world of foreign travel then vanished and was replaced by uncertainties, changing travel restrictions and the cost of Covid testing which could come to more than one’s whole holiday. At least we were no longer confined at home or ‘locked down’.  Freedom to explore Olde England was much needed.

Where would we book a holiday in England when all cottages had been booked already? I joined Historic Houses (formerly Historic Houses Association) at Easter, the association of privately owned grand houses. Wanting to see more of my ancestral North Norfolk, we booked a cottage for late June in a moated manor house, owned by the Walpole family: Mannington Hall. We did not realise that this week coincided with the midsummer blooming of vintage roses in a place which specialises in roses in their hundreds.  Without knowing, I had booked for ‘rose heaven’.

 

Mannington’s rosy cafe no longer frequented by coach parties

Why do we need holidays? 

What does one go on holiday for?   Often, I come back with a ‘rag bag’ of new notions such as:  ideas for garden plants, interior design inspiration, insights into history, a jumble of photographs, encounters with new birds and animals, more knowledge about foods and a head full of odd snatches of conversations with complete strangers who share their whole story in five minutes.  There are moments of surprise and sheer delight, such as seeing swathes of Norfolk’s red poppies massed on verges, unseen in southern England and ‘cobbled’ walls and cottages. This time, we saw more of how the coronavirus had affected stately homes depriving them of coach loads of visitors and the income to run them.

An example of delightful ‘cobbled walls’ in north Norfolk- uniform whole stones.

Sometimes one returns from holidays with a longing to live somewhere else. This time I visited a small town that a friend has not only fallen in love with, on her past holidays, but is having a new house built in, to start a new rural life amid the kind of historic beauty which most of us find healing and uplifting.  I would say that the theme for this holiday was : ‘People making a new start’ and ‘Large feathered friends’.

Mannington Hall and Gardens

We arrived early in the afternoon, in good weather. The countryside north of Norwich is open, remote, fertile and beautiful in a very green way. Opening up and driving through Mannington’s private gates, down its unmade driveway, reminded me of the start of the film of ‘Rebecca’. One was, in one’s imagination, owner of a country estate.  Our spacious cottage was in the main courtyard, over a moat bridge and it had a lovely bedroom view, over the moat and a lake here:

View over the moat and lakes from the bedroom

Wandering the grounds, we soon met a friendly member of the Walpole family. He told us about the coaches not arriving anymore on the days when the Hall was open and about the challenges of running a tourist attraction, in the era of Covid. He told us about the pair of swans on the moat who arrived during a wedding and stayed: they now had five cygnets (more about them later).    We later fed them from the bedroom window.  The parents were self sacrificing, allowing most of the bread to feed their young.  They are exemplary.

Then I took a walk around the gardens and lakes through dark lakeside tunnels of rhododendrons with their fallen petals littering the ground, in the half light. They  seem to grow and flower in the deepest darkness. Then out on to open lawn, to a little temple and this view:

Side view of Mannington Hall

My unforgettable discovery was the huge vintage Rose Gardens, which I stumbled upon, behind the pretty cafe.  It is a series of walled gardens with over a thousand varieties of roses, almost all in bloom at the end of June.  It had the ineffable beauty of years of love, knowledge, engagement and care. Although there are four gardeners at Mannington, there was no block planting here. It constantly reminded me of the still moment in the Four Quartets - a garden beyond time.

The first ‘room’ in the Rose Garden - all white Rambling Rector climbing rose

The furthest ‘room’ - with low Ferdy, a low pink rose bush, in the corner

Its creator, Lord (Robin) Walpole studied botany at Cambridge University under Max Walters, Director of Cambridge Botanical Garden and Fellow of Kings, an academic botanist and writer.  He had inspired and opened this garden of rose specimens, each beautifully labelled. (I already knew about him as a friend is married to his naturalist son). 

Soon, I was reading up on Empress Josephine, the first rose fanatic and her rose collection at her chateau of Malmaison. Some of the roses here were called ‘Malmaison’ and now I knew why. I was soon back, with a notebook, deciding that I most like climbers, which are not blousy. I don’t like petals going brown and falling off, one at a time.   It is better to have little flowers.

I need a repeat flowering rose that grows in all soils. I’m not crazy about over petalled damask roses or the single dog rose type (Tudor rose), the original in Europe.  I like little roses, corals,  cream, white and elegant ones, in yellow.  I learned that most of our roses come from Chinese gardens, so they are Asian roses.  After discussion with others, I narrowed my choices down to Ferdy, a bush rose, Desdemona, a repeat flowering pot rose and New Dawn, a repeat flowering climber.

Beautiful yellow climber - ‘Elegance’

This garden is, in my mind, a major legacy left by Lord Walpole, something not even mentioned in his obituaries. He had rescued and renovated Mannington Hall and Estate in the 1960s and 1970s as the main residence, now, of the Walpoles, making it into a veritable little gem of beauty, sharing it with others and leaving to us this world class rose garden.  I found out,  in the delightful local community village shop at Itteringham, that he had sadly died in early May aged 82. So I was glad to learn from his family that they are making every effort to keep his legacy going which is ‘what he would have wanted’. 

Another ‘room’ in the rose garden

There is no wifi in the cottage which may explain, apart from rather older fixtures and a few holes in the front door, why it is affordable.  We have a BT contract that enables us to piggyback off other people’s BT connection (without security issues) and we managed to do this but only in the kitchen and living room which soon turned into a kind of international communications hub.  How we got a signal just there and nowhere else on the estate (Paolo tried everywhere even in the long dark tunnels) is a mystery. Here  I received an email from my MP telling me that a trial for a Covid treatment is going forward at Oxford University and I was able to reply saying how much I welcomed it.  Otherwise, I would have been offline for the entire time. 

The cottage at Mannington Hall

 

The unplanted angled knot garden in the rose garden

Sandringham House and Estate 

Sandringham House is a member of Historic Houses, so we got in for free. Sandringham is the Queen’s private house and her rural estate (which includes several villages) near Kings Lynn. Balmoral in the HIghlands is her other private property.

 

Waiting for Sandringham to open

Sandringham from an odd angle

It may be because it is a private property that it does not have the manicured look of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, or even of immaculate Osborne House, owned by English Heritage.  There are no long views from the house in any direction.

The front view and famous front porch of Sandringham

There are no marching soldiers or household cavalry, here, but the royal stud, where the Queen breeds her racehorses, fronted by a large statue of her favourite racehorse, in bronze is on this Estate. The stud is the only place which one would say ‘looks regal’ on the whole estate. The rest is low key and it was managed by Prince Philip, for years. After seeing it, it is no surprise to me that he retired to a very modest cottage, Home Farm, nearer the remote sea, because the atmosphere of the whole estate is unshowy, even financially slightly ‘straightened’. There is a lot to see across the Estate, if one has more time. One could visit various plantations and an arboretum, if one lived locally.  There is the childhood home of Princess Diana which has been a disability holiday home for some time (now closed).  

I wanted to locate York Cottage, the dowdy home of Edwardian royalty, until 1926, when Queen Alexandra died, leaving the main house to her son George V and Queen Mary, by then long into their reign. Their son Edward VIII said that no one could possibly understand his father until they had seen York Cottage. It does indeed give an insight into Edward’s rather odd and possibly over disciplined background, lacking any touch of luxury.  Edward reacted with worldliness and rejection of discipline and duty, which was his downfall.

 

The unmade drive of York Cottage

York Cottage and its lake

York Cottage is not a cottage in any sense of the word, but a low, jumbled late Victorian house, which in any other context long ago would have been demolished due to having no architectural merit or saving grace (or due to woodworm, dry, flaking paintwork, or some other terminal blight). It has an unmade up driveway, zero elegance and, reportedly, very cramped rooms.  It is overgrown and without appeal, possibly because it currently acts as the Sandringham Estate Office, but it was never impressive.  People talked about it as ‘a house in the suburbs’ unfit for a King and Queen. The Queen’s father was born in York Cottage, loved Sandringham and died there possibly because bush camps, ideal for scouts, are round every corner. But then, George VI was a very modest man.

The grounds have a nice lake near the main house, with a tea house on the bank, for regal summer teas. One likes to think the Queen enjoys iced tea in here on hot August days, but somehow, I doubt it.

The lake - Queen’s tea house on the far shore with island in between

The main building is uninspiring, if not ugly. It reminds me of a minor public school, now down at heel and half shuttered. There is an incredibly dated air about it. No flower tubs along the whole length of it. Inside, it is grander, but does not rate beside many grand stately homes.   It lacks ‘weight’. 

It was built for Queen Alexandra in the 1870s, in an area which much reminded her of flat Denmark, so it was not for show, but a place to enjoy her family and animals. Apparently, during the 1960s, the Queen and Prince Philip considered demolishing and rebuilding the main house, so they were not unaware of how it looked to modern eyes. At one end, there is a smallish formal garden, which is probably below the Queen’s bedroom, on the first floor. There must be thousands of finer formal gardens, across the country, even in modest manor houses. The trees are fine and the grass is cut, but there are no signs of luxury or even personal enjoyment, such as a tennis court or croquet lawn, and not much colour. There are no outdoor, heated swimming pools here (though there are at Anmer where the Cambridges live).  The purpose of the whole estate, was or still is, hunting - namely shooting pheasant - which are still very plentiful in north Norfolk.

 

Roped off Buddha by the formal garden, Sandringham

Pheasants often run suicidally across the road in front of cars in Norfolk.   Is road kill a serious source of supplementary income, across north Norfolk, one wonders? It is legal to pick up a pheasant which is road kill (but not to kill pheasant outside the designated hunting season).  Pheasant tastes like chicken but grainier, but the wild bird has a stronger flavour. North Norfolk is a popular retreat with the hunting and shooting ‘set’ partly due to game and particularly pheasant. 35m of these poor birds are shot every year (who by?). Actually they do seem to be suicidal: they are the most ‘road killed’ species in Britain providing food for other animals.

My guess is that riding around the Estate has been a key attraction for the Queen. We know that carriage driving at Sandringham was Prince Philip’s passion into his nineties. We saw the fast road he turned his landrover over on and it is an easily imaginable accident, for anyone. On the way back to the car, we passed the famous lych gate at Sandringham Church, famous for royal family well wishers on Christmas Day.   The church is a short walk from the main house and a kind of chapel to the house, as there is no Sandringham village or parish church.  I am sure there is much to see on the Sandringham estate with miles of walks. One could spend a few days exploring it all, wandering across acres of the estate open to the public, ideally with a dog, but better in a horse drawn carriage.  There is an Edinburgh Plantation and knowledge of trees would prove fruitful.  A dog cart, to get around, would do me.

The ugly end of the main house

Sandringham Estate is the remnant of a world still dreaming of its vanished heyday of grand Victorian house parties. Princess Alexandra of Wales, at her elegant best, would have engaged the guests, while various married mistresses of Edward, Prince of Wales probably sneaked off with him into its many secret places. I have always been in awe of Alexandra’s beauty and style. Now I find that she was incredibly generous to people who wrote to her, supposedly in need; she recycled her clothes, raised funds for medical needs and all in spite of being socially isolated, due to hereditary deafness, withdrawing with her children and pets. She did most of Queen Victoria’s ribbon cutting for her, coping with her disability. She even had her stockings darned. Her impact on fashion was such that women copied her high necks (originally to disguise a scar) and her limp, for 50 years. Her limp was known as ‘Alexandra’s Limp’.  It is fitting that her portrait is displayed in the main house which she loved, lived and died in. She was always immensely popular, unlike her mother in law, Victoria and her husband.  The house is a kind of shrine to Queen Alexandra: she deserved one.

Sandringham is natural and unshowy, which is admirable, far better than some gilded country chateau with a couple of helicopter pads, indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a golf course for dodgy glitterati. However, I can understand why a certain Meghan Markle took one look and buzzed off to Montecito. There was even talk of them having York Cottage, which is as far from Hollywood aspirations as one can possibly get.

We drove up Kings Avenue, a fine, straight tree-lined avenue about a mile long, past the royal stud to Anmer, which is an unimpressive ribbon settlement, barely a village (or did we see the wrong bit?) near Anmer Hall, where the Cambridges live.

We finally got back to the modern, glitzy world and had an excellent patio lunch in the next village to Anmer.  I was amazed  by their delicious mushy peas, (which I usually hate) and complimented the cook on them.  He would not divulge his mushy pea secret recipe - unless I came back which I may do.

Blakeney

We visited Blakeney because my parents adored it. It is a small port on a tidal inlet from the sea. They often had lunch in the hotel there while staying locally.  I cannot see what they saw in it, especially as that day it was very overcrowded. The parking charge were 10 pounds, for one hour.   We got away as fast as possible.

Cromer

I have long wanted to see Cromer, for a reason I have long forgotten.  It is possibly where my Norfolk ancestors may have holidayed at least once, if not twice during the 1880s. It is a lively little seaside town, not unappealing and boasts a lovely little gently vibrating pier, which doubles as a lifeboat station with slipway, and some nice Georgian bow fronted houses, and alleyways, mixed with more Victorian brick buildings. Its speciality is brown crab, Cromer crab, which is sweet and unique.    It has a touch of Eastbourne, but far less grand, mixed with Lyme Regis.  Many tourists do not venture onto the pier, which gives the best view in town.  It has a strangely relaxing atmosphere, a mix of the whole structure slightly vibrating with the tide, the fresh winds and the curve of the seating.  As good a Prozac, though I have never tried that.

Paolo trying sweet Cromer crab 

Brown crabs that are caught around Cromer:  Cromer crab is as famous as Cornish crab. The chalk shelf and nutrient-rich waters in this region make for a particularly flavour, which is tender and sweet. They are well-meated and have a relatively high proportion of white to brown meat. They taste best with lemon juice. Cromer crabs have been caught in the region for centuries. It is an industry which lures tourists from around the world to sample this fresh crab with its uniquely delicate flavour. Crabbing isvia pots, which is traditional and sustainable because all crabs have at least one breeding season before they are caught. The Cromer and Sheringham Crab and Lobster Festival is held annually to celebrate the culinary traditions of the area.  

Delightful Cromer Pier

We had tea in a craft venue inland, where we tried vegan cake - which I did not like at all. It tasted of margarine, or oil or something.  I was entranced there by cobbled walls and buildings. I would love to live in a cobbled cottage like this.

Cobbled Norfolk farmhouse

Holkham Hall and Beach

Lady Glenconner’s best selling book ‘Lady in Waiting’ describes balls in her youth before the Second World War at Holkham Hall, the home of the Earls of Leicester to this day. She was a childhood friend of the Queen and Princess Margaret and she now lives in a modest house in this area, having been left almost nothing by her once wealthy husband, Lord Glenconner who left his fortune to his one time butler, in the West Indies.  Therefore, she turned to writing, to supplement her income and no doubt her success has helped to pay the bills, recently.  Holkham is a rather ugly house, in the Palladian style, in the wrong material for Palladian, but its park is superb, in the Capability Brown English garden fashion, with widely spaced trees.  We had lunch in the nice shop courtyard.  

Its shop stocks nothing affordable except grouse feathers for cowboy type hats that trendy camp followers wear, with long boots, during the shooting season.  I was tempted by tan leather handbags in the upper class style, but again, the price tag was eye watering. 

We finally accessed the only part of the estate which was open, because the house was closed. This was the Great Walled Garden, quite a distance from the house, a vast area of new planting in what were once the huge kitchen gardens.  Everything was on a large scale - which is not aesthetically ideal in gardening, if it is at times, impressive.  There is a wow factor, without charm.

Big planting of hostas...

I was fascinated by the shaded planting among wood and felt I could copy that in our woodland garden.

  

Ferns planted among Big Dead Wood in the Walled Gardens

The daring vineyard in the Walled Garden - with a vine ‘tree’

Big classical doors in the Walled Garden

I felt the rose garden at Mannington beat it by far, in terms of aesthetics and appeal.  We were going to have dinner at the Victoria Inn at Holkham, but the weather was not good enough to spend the afternoon waiting, so we went to Holkham Beach.  This is a fascinating scene: whispering, mysterious woodland backing a wide expanse of sandy beaches and sand dunes, the sea way too far to reach easily:  it would take an hour of walking there and back.  The royal family used to ride horses on sandy Holkham Beach and many horses were in the car park, being unsaddled. On hot days, the royal children, down the years, have built sand castles on Holkham Beach.  I am not so sure about swimming here: it is the chilly North Sea (though I once went in, during steaming 2003 in East Kent, when the North Sea was like the Mediterranean).  There were wonderful bird sounds coming from the salt marsh: curlews and other birds I could not name.

Aylsham

On our last day, I remained at the delightful Mannington Hall feeding the swans on the moat.  The swan parents turned their heads and beady eyes on one side to look up at me, and largely left the bread to their fast growing family. That gesture quite spooked me out but they clearly related to me - and trusted me. The night we got home, I had a nightmare about being in a rudderless coracle on a pond being attacked by six aggressive male swans and I had to be woken up - because I was screaming at them to “Go away!”.  In fact, I had warmed to swans who are wonderful parents, who share the burden of their cygnets absolutely equally. One cannot tell the male and female apart and they are equally regal.  A lesson for us humans, perhaps?

Having traced my family back to South Norfolk, I finally found that in the early 18th century they came from Aylsham so I wanted to see this village and I was enchanted.  Set in the midst of beautiful countryside, it is an old large village, or small town, but I felt at home immediately.  Blickling Hall is nearby. In the car park, I met a woman in her sixties from Leigh- on-Sea who had just bought a house there who was starting a new life.  She told me that she had lost her husband, just before he retired and she had recently buried her father.  She now had children living on the Norfolk Broads, twenty minutes away.  Due to stamp duty pressure, barely any properties remained on the market, so she had opted for Alysham, which she  liked. A new start, I told her in a lovely place…. I felt very happy in Budgens in Aylsham, a very clean and well laid out supermarket. Everyone was very friendly because of the slow pace of life. Most of the houses are 18th century and probably have lovely back gardens but the loveliest house in the area was definitely Mannington Hall

The drawbridge at Mannington Hall

Kentwell Hall, Suffolk

Kentwell Hall - the round room is a model of a Camera Obscura that works. There is a dovecote hidden in the roof, on the right

To break the journey home we stopped at Kentwell Hall, an Elizabethan house south of Bury St Edmunds, free to Historic Houses members. It is famous for live-in authentic reenactments of authentic life in Tudor times. We had a taste of the barn and quarters where they take place.

  Life  in Tudor times

As with other houses in the Covid era, we focused on the gardens and found a wonderful dead sculpted tree, blighted by The Great Storm, called ‘The Tower of Babylon’, with ladders of ambition leading nowhere and doors with keys but with blocked keyholes, all telling how people cannot work together to create heaven on earth - because God prevents it.  This reverberated strongly with the shocking story that emerged the day before about the Minister for Health (and Covid) being brought down by not adhering to his own Covid rules, in private in his ministerial office. That was definitely ‘a Babylonian career ladder’ which had led him nowhere.

We also found this example of impressive topiary extolling the virtues of cameraderie:

Figures hugging each other in topiary

We had lunch, a delicious salad from their walled garden in my case, charmed by a magnificent peacock which was just as intelligent and civil as the adult swans, in spite of having a brain the size of a bean (though they have recently found that brain size has nothing to do with intelligence). This peacock put real but still gentle pressure on us and eventually, by mesmerising me with its mild manners and its serpentine mossy green back, it won from me some flapjack which it loved (though it rejected bread). 

I was also entranced by the cottage with honeysuckle in this photo, behind the peacock (below) because, in fact, the brick perfectly matched the honeysuckle blooms.  It was like an image taken from 18th century ‘toile’ material. I half expected to see a blushing milkmaid arriving with her buckets balanced on a yoke across her shoulders.  I guess this is the kind of cottage my ancestors lived in on the border between Norfolk and Suffolk.

Entrancing ‘toile’ cottage behind the peacock with strategically placed cartwheels

Hadleigh

For another new start, on the way home, we accidentally went through the town that I had tried to read to reach on our outward journey but we missed the turning on the M25.  Hadleigh was a wealthy Suffolk wool town in medieval times, just north of East Bergholt. This is where a friend and colleague is having a new house built, having driven through it and fallen in love with it, on her holiday.  It is a picture postcard place with a huge and fine parish church and two reformed martyrs, one with a commemorative obelisk where he was burnt at the stake under Queen Mary. It is much bigger than Aylsham but along the same lines.  I am sure my friend, who like me, loves old buildings, will feel at home here. 

 

The story of reformation martyr, Rev Rowland Taylor vicar of Hadleigh

 

Magnificent Hadleigh Church, a Suffolk wool (wealth) church

Summary

East Anglia, in decent weather, in June, has history, walled rose gardens so beautiful that they stop time, royalty, large birds, sea and endless lovely villages and buildings. It can all be enjoyed is if one is lucky one can find somewhere affordable to stay.  If the mystery of destiny is with one, one might even find a potential new hom (though property is not cheap there)

One knows that a holiday has made an impact when one returns home and feels jolted for a day or so - out of place.  Am I living in the right place?  Would I feel more at home, there?    These thoughts may remain or they may evaporate but I do feel that natural, fertile, uncommercialised North Norfolk has made serious inroads into my deepest imagination.  

Part of the Mannington rose garden, without roses