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Herstmonceux Castle pics1 
Herstmonceux Castle
3 courses x 6 weeks = time to take pictures
I was at Herstmonceux Castle from May 1 to June 13. I didn't get around to taking any pictures until almost a week after my arrival. Not that I was too busy - I just somehow didn't venture out onto the grounds. Many of these pictures, in fact, aren't not of the castle and grounds but rather from the numerous fields trips I went on. I also snuck in a couple from when I went to visit a friend in Glasgow, although I didn't add any from my solo trip to Stonehenge. Probably because I didn't deem any of my pictures web-worthy. Don't get me wrong - I liked seeing the site, but honestly if you've seen one picture of the stone circle, you've seen them all. I should have something from Salisbury, however. I'll have to look into that.
| Herstmonceux Castle | First Week - Introduction to the castle. Here it is: Herstmonceux Castle. I wasn't going to shoot it straight on, but then I decided I needed an imposing view. |
| Herstmonceux Castle, friendlier angle | Technically, it's not a castle: it's a "crenellated manor house." But as you can see, it has towers, it has a moat, it had a drawbridge, it has a dungeon, and it has ghosts. That makes it a castle in my books. |
| Gardens at the Castle | The estate is extensive and has several gardens, including a walled garden, a Shakespeare garden, and a herb garden, which I have discovered is a very nice place to sit and read. At the back of the gardens, there is a place to rest where one can always find company. |
| Somewhere on the Grounds | This bridge doesn't really lead over anything, I don't think... The moat is off to the left. There are lots of pretty little spots around the castle, and as I have discovered, they look quite a bit different at the beginning of May than in the middle of June. |
| Expatriated Goose | Yes, that is a Canadian goose swimming in the moat. King Charles II (?) was responsible for introducing them to the English countryside. There were seven goslings this spring, but I didn't manage to get close to them. The three ducklings in the courtyard, or the other hand, were very friendly. But I thought they were photographed enough by other people. |
| Penshurst Place Gardens | First field trip, May 5 Penshurst Place One of the courses I took involved visiting English country houses every Wednesday afternoon. This particular country house had fantastic gardens. This one is the "Spring and Autumn Garden," if I'm not mistaken. |
| "Porcupine" at Penshurst Place | This, believe it or not, is a statue of a porcupine. I didn't read the plaque, so I can't tell you why it is there, or who put it there. Or why it looks more like a lion with quills than a porcupine. |
| Leicester Square, near Penshurst Place | "My flesh also shall rest in hope." Some of us walked from Penshurst Place to a nearby church, where we went into full tourist mode (ie, lots of picture-taking). The church itself wasn't any different from all the other old churches throughout the country; I liked this message leading back to the road. |
| Church in Leicester Square | I very quickly regretted my decision to leave my Nikon at home. I could have done a nice close up of these two crosses by the entrance to the church. |
| Somewhere on the Castle Grounds | End of Week 1 I was in class most of the day on Thursday so Friday I went exploring. There's a small building not too far from the castle, essentially just a shell which opens onto an enclosed garden. An archway in the garden wall leads into the forest. I did an "after" shot, but the bluebells have been replaced by tall ferns so it's an entirely green picture. At least, I think it's the same place... |
| London Eye | First trip to London, May 8 Very grey, isn't it? The weather was rather uncooperative whenever I was out taking pictures. That wheel-thing is the London Eye. If you have money to burn, it makes one full rotation in about half an hour, so you get a fairly good aerial view of the city. I wouldn't know, however, since I'm too cheap to try it. By the way, this is from a bridge in St James' Park. Looking the other way, if you stand in the right place, is Buckingham Palace. |
| St Paul's Cathedral | St Paul's Cathedral. They are currently restoring/renovating/reconstructing/whatever, so there is scaffolding all over the place. But the clever tour guide suggested that we go up to the base of this statue, and then the trees would block out the worst of it. Unfortunately, it didn't fix the colourless sky. |
| Quaint Garden in Alfriston | Local Orientation May 9 For those people who weren't exhausted after the first week, there was a bus trip to familiarize us with the area. The first stop was in Alfriston. Tiny little village. This view isn't, of course, the reason we stopped there, but I thought it looked neat. |
| Brighton Lamppost, with Pavillion | The tour ended with free time in Brighton, for those of use who weren't foolish enough to take geography, that is. But since I didn't feel like shopping, once I had found a bank machine, I had nothing to do. So I wandered around taking pictures. |
| Pevensey Castle Ruins | Week 2 Trip to Pevensey Castle, May 11 This was a classics field trip - Pevensey has some of the highest surviving Roman walls in Britain. But they aren't all that photogenic. The Norman castle ruins, on the other hand, are. Just ignore the metal fences. |
| Roman Walls | If you want to get nice pictures of the walls, you have to get close up. Real Roman masonry, by the East Gate. The flowers and vines don't seem to have much respect for history. |
| Courtyard at Knole House | Knole House, May 12 Field trips two days in a row -sweet! There are two things you notice very quickly about historical places. One, you aren't ever allowed to take pictures inside. Two, these people stole (or bought) a lot of sculptures. Knole has an overly-decadent interior, though occasionally it is done rather tastefully. |
| Deer at Knole House | Being good city kids, for the most part, we were all fascinated by the herds of deer around Knole. I didn't try to get very close. Others did, with limited success. |
| Victoria Embankment Gardens | Back in London again. May 15. Actually, both the 14th and the 15th were spent in London and if this picture didn't have a date stamp, I wouldn't be able to remember which day it was. Friday it was to visit the Cabinet War Rooms and an exhibit called In-a-Gadda-da-Vida at Tate Britain. Saturday it was to visit the British Museum. I wandered around the museum for several hours then wandered over to the rendezvous point. Since I had some time to kill, I spent it in the park. |
| Oxford | Oxford May 16 This building is where the Rhodes Scholarship Trustees work. I had to take a picture, because I figure that's as close as I'm ever going to get. But that's alright. Oxford is a nice town, but I don't think I'd want to go to university there. |
| Petworth Place Grounds | Week 3 Petworth House, May 19 This claim to fame of this house is the extensive art collection. It's gallery was expanded twice to make room for more paintings and sculptures, and the walls are still covered. The gardens are typical 18th century, designed by Capability Brown. One of the specialties of the time was dotting the landscape with these temples and rotundas and anything else that would make the landscape interesting. |
| Close-up of Flowers at Petworth Place | Still at Petworth. I have a thing for close-ups of flowers. Bet it would have been better with my Nikon. |
| Courtyard at Somerset House | "Midterm" trip, to where else? London. May 21-22. They dumped us at the hotel Friday morning and left us to our own devices, to find our way to any course-based activities we had and otherwise stay out of trouble. So I wandered off on my own. First stop, Courtauld Institute. I was starting to regret the £5 entrance fee, but then I reached the room with the Kandinskys. I liked that room. Would have happily paid a reasonable amount to get a print of one of the paintings. (£25 is not reasonable) Of course, no sooner had I stepped outside than it started to rain. This is to prove that the sky isn't always colourless. |
| Embankment Gardens | As you can see, the sun did come out later that day. I decided to wander down to the tower of London. Too cheap to pay the admission charge, I managed to spend twice that much in the tower shop. I keep meaning to take a picture of what I bought - I think it's really cool. In any case, my wanderings took me through another park, where I finished my lunch, then along the Thames. |
| St James' Park | Saturday I again had nowhere to go, except for a Jack the Ripper Tour as the last thing before heading back to Herstmonceux. So I wandered over to the Victoria and Albert Museum. On the way, I passed through St James' Park. There was a second bird like this, and naturally all the tourists were taking pictures. So I did, too. |
| Country House near Bignor | Week 4 Fishbourne and Bignor Roman Villas May 23 Obviously, this isn't a Roman villa. We were supposed to go up on Bignor hill, but the bus was too big so they decided not to try it. This was the "next best thing." Your stereotypical country house with thatched roof. The children in the backyard were laughing at us. |
| Grounds at Chiswick House | Week 5 Last field trip: Chiswick and Syon June 2 This is another example of the typical 18th century garden decorations. The garden at Chiswick was designed in the early 18th century and is actually a transition between the formal Baroque gardens of the previous century and the Beautiful gardens that became popular later that century. Or at least so I understood from my essay research. |
| Interesting- looking Stump at Chiswick | Still at Chiswick. Nothing special here, I just liked the way that tree stump looked. |
| Peacock at Syon | Moving on to Syon. This peacock was kinda nice to me, letting me get almost the full display. Earlier, when we were heading back to the house from the conservatory, he had turned his back on everyone. |
| Swans at Syon | I had to wait awhile for the swans to stop preening themselves. And then one tried to swim away. Syon has a lovely garden, with a pond in the middle just like all the other gardens. |
| Conservatory at Syon | This is inside the conservatory at Syon. It's not a very exciting place as far as plants go, but it does have a waterfall at one end. And it's true beauty is in being made mostly of glass. Some of the girls in my class decided that it would be a great place to hold a wedding reception, particularly on a clear night. Unfortunately, it is rather close to Heathrow, so there are planes flying over head ever few minutes or so. |
| Glasgow University | Escape from the Castle: Glasgow June 4-6 I spent most of the 4th and the 6th travelling, so I only really had the 5th in Glasgow. Particularly since I went to see Troy Friday night. (Let's just say that "inspired from the Iliad" is as far as it goes.) Why Glasgow? I have a friend who was studying there. (that equals free place to stay ;) We went on a bus tour of the city, one of those hop-on, hop-off deals. This is at Glasgow University. Very nice place. Wouldn't mind studying there. |
| Somewhere in Glasgow | We wandered around the West End a bit. And I hope you are noticing a trend in my choice of subjects... |
| Across the Moat | Week 6 Stuck at the Castle. I had an exam on the 7th, so I spent most of the 8th wandering around, not really doing anything. Except taking pictures. This path passes along the moat, and it looks quite different from the way it did in May. |
| In the Woods | I finally had time to wander along the woodland paths a bit. This tree, not surprisingly, caught my attention. And it is one tree. (I think it's a yew, but don't quote me on that.) There's a smaller one further along that doesn't quite reach back to the ground. |
| By the Pond | I came across this waterfall during my first wanderings in May. There weren't any flowers then, so I didn't take any pictures. I wandered past again at the end of May and the irises were in bloom, but I didn't have my camera along. By the time I made it back, the irises had mostly dried up. But it's still pretty. |
| Strange Creature | This is the kind of interesting thing one comes across in the garden. There is also "Herst-henge" at the top of the hill, which consists of tree stumps that have celtic runes carved in them. It is meant to be a place of peace, to rejuvenate and give strength at the beginning of something new. |
| Hidden Garden | This is a tiny little garden, tucked into the hedges. I wouldn't have even known it was there if it weren't for the sound of running water. |
| Stairway to Foxgloves | I climbed down those stairs. It was a lot easier than climbing back up. The middle section is almost overgrown with foxglove (the bees really seemed to like it) so it was worth the effort. |