Beautiful Blackwell, a Second Look

Shall we feast our eyes on some more of the craftsmanship of Blackwell House? You seemed to enjoy the first course.  I’ve updated the header, to put the house in the context of the landscape.

Stained glass

Textiles

The Simpson family, certainly met that brief,

with exquisite embroidery and woodwork  Rowan berries take centre stage, in carvings

And iron work

And of course mother nature provided both inspiration and the perfect foil.

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Beautiful Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts House

Blackwell House is somewhere I love to return too, it’s my favourite period house, it seems I’ve not posted about it before, not sure how that happened.  I first visited here not long after it had been restored and opened to the public in 2001, its just south of the town of Windermere in the Lake District

Built in 1890, by the Holt family who had made their fortune in Manchester, and designed  architect Baillie Scott, it must have been a blast of fresh air after the dark heavy design of the Victorian period.  This is the white drawing room, that looks over lake Windermere, its so fresh and feminine.

It’s a party house with its large spaces and mistral gallery

It is full of glorious details,

With wealthy industrialists coming to the area, to build their new homes away from the smoke of the cities, there was a ready market for the crafts and arts of the Keswick School of Industrial Art 

Such delicate window latches

Gorgeous textiles, rowan berries are a recurring motif ,

It’s always been a place that encourages you to relax, sit in the window seats, play the piano (if able) the National Trust are moving towards this kind of experience, but Blackwell seems to do it best.

On the upper floor there is a gallery space, that  hosts contemporary exhibitions and displays collections of period arts (these miniature Lancastrian pottery vases are my favourite, Mr Uphilldowndale, says I only want to take them home so I can feed them up)

Speaking of food, the cafe is to be recommended too.

 

Hundred Year Stone

We stumbled upon this beautiful sculpture during a visit to the Lake district last weekend.  It’s by Peter Randall-Page, I’ve fallen for his work in the past

 

Commissioned by the National Trust in its Centenary Year supported by the National Trust’s Foundation for Art, Northern County Council and National Trust Centres Associations. Sculpture is situated on the shore of Derwent water between Calf Close Bay and Broomhill Point looking across to Brandlehow, near Keswick, The lake District, Cumbria.

I’m indebted to the two German gents, who spent quite some time with google translate, looking up  this art work on their phones, they rather obscured the view, but had they not done so, I wouldn’t have had the added extra of geese flying through the shot. All ways a bonus

Still Life

A beautiful dragonfly, sadly deceased. I lifted it out of the pond this afternoon.

It did give me a chance to have a close look at its beauty, the shadows from the sunlight falling on it translucent wings

gave it another dimension.

divine.

The Berry Report

I was concerned in the heat of the summer that there would be a shortage of berries for the birds this winter, great swathes of the best blackberry banks had withered and died,

The winberries, had the very life blood sucked out of them by a young oak.

And of course my beloved pink rowan, had failed to flower, oh how I will miss it this winter, the birds will probably be more adaptive about it than me.

But things have rallied, acorns are abundant, I thought I’d be seeing the jays with their stitching flight, working across the field to their favourite oaks, but I’ve not seen one, I think they have found one tree and scoffed themselves silly, until they are unable to move

The red rowans are heaving with berries, well they were, the chickens have made inroads into them, further than you’d expect of a chicken.

They seemed to be having training seminars on how to get to the best position,

I wouldn’t mind but I’d put the wire cloches there to stop them digging up my plants

The same flourish can not be said of the grass. Farmers are still very short of feed for the winter.

 

Storm and tempest.

The weather over the last 24 hours, can leave us in no doubt the Summer is over. High winds and torrential rain have roughed thing up a bit.

If the leaves can hang to the trees for a little longer I think we might be in for a particularly good display of Autumn colours, thanks to our long hot summer.

Away with the fairies

Onwards into south Wales, Joe is living and working in Cardiff , on his placement year, part of his university course. We brought a van load of ‘essentials’ and helped settle him into his new abode.  We took the opportunity to head on to our favourite spot on the Gower peninsular, Nicholaston camp site, as well as  the joys of underfloor heating in the shower block, it has easy access down on to the beach. The path takes you through ancient woodland, with many autumn delights

Once through the woods, the path laces through the dunes,

that have abundant flowers

so much for snails not liking sand and prickly things

I felt a little guilty that I hadn’t brought Spud the dog down to the beach with me, but the plan had been for a medative kind of meander, that was led by the eye, not the tennis ball; walking three Springer Spaniels must be a whole different ball game

There was much  beauty hiding in plain sight

A reminder of the lunacy of British politics flashed up every now and then.

The tide sorts the shells by size, the waters draining from Oxwich marsh,

sweep them out to sea again.