No more than a mile west of Woodstock, lies the small village of Wootton. On the very edge of the Cotswolds proper, this is a beautiful little village with a wonderful church, and lots of classic history and heritage.
Wootton is a large village and civil parish located to the south-west of Bedford, in the north of Bedfordshire, England. The parish also includes the hamlets of Hall End, Keeley Green and Wootton Green.
For almost a millennium, the ancient ruins of great architecture lay buried beneath the jungle vegetation on the Yucatan Peninsula. Abandoned by their creators these ancient temples and pyramids are a stunning reminder of a powerful civilization that once ruled the people of Central America. Although the accomplishments of the ancient Mayans are astonishing, no city would escape the inevitable collapse. One by one they were swallowed by the rainforest leaving the amazing Mayan ruins hidden, waiting to be discovered.
The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples, and noted for its logosyllabic script—the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in pre-Columbian Americas—as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system.
We’ve visited Yarnton before in the first episode of Exploring the Cotswolds, but at the time we didn’t realise there was so much more to see. Join us this week as we explore the church and some of the stories around the village.
Yarnton is a village and civil parish in Oxfordshire about 1 mile southwest of Kidlington and 4 miles northwest of Oxford. The 2011 Census recorded the parish’s population as 2,545.
Julia visits the lush Ionian island of Corfu, often called the least Greek of all the Greek islands. She discovers a little slice of Italy, and samples the delights of its cuisine. Her trip begins in the capital Corfu Town where she discovers a surprising cosmopolitan city more like slice of Italy than Greece.
Join curators, conservators, and horticulturists as they discuss some projects they have been working on over the past year and experience the magic of The Met Cloisters.
Featuring: Griffith Mann, Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge, The Met Cloisters Carly Still, Managing Horticulturist, The Met Cloisters Lucretia Kargere, Conservator, The Met Cloisters Julia Perratore, Assistant Curator, The Met Cloisters Yvette Weaver, Assistant Horticulturist, The Met Cloisters
Featured Artwork: Book of Flower Studies, ca. 1510–1515, Made in Tours, France (acc. no. 2019.197) Altar Predella and Socle of Archbishop Don Dalmau de Mur ca. 1456–1458, Made in Saragossa, Aragon, Spain (acc. no. 09.146) Apse from San Martin at Fuentidueña, ca. 1175–1200, Made in Segovia, Castile-León, Spain (L.58.86a–f) Video by Steadfast Productions in association with The Met
With its stunning view of Lake Geneva, the Beau-Rivage, in Geneva has attracted actors from Roger Moore to Angelina Jolie, and played host to political luminaries like Kofi Annan, Charles de Gaulle and the Dalai Lama. Political history has been made here, too: In 1898, the Empress “Sisi” of Austria was stabbed to death by an anarchist at the Beau-Rivage. Nearly a hundred years later, in 1987, the German politician Uwe Barschel was discovered dead here, in a bathtub. Family-run for generations, the hotel is impressive not just for its size, but also for its discretion. Now, director Jacques Mayer uses interviews, archival film and rarely seen photographs to vividly chronicle some of the most fateful years of the Beau-Rivage.
Twelve glorious acres of manicured grounds surround partly Elizabethan Flete House, former seat of the Mildmay family, which overlooks Ermington and Dartmoor, enjoying ‘probably the finest situation in Devonshire’ according to Cornish poet and historian Richard Polwhele (1797).
At Holbeton in the South Hams, not far from Georgian Modbury, it was used as a maternity hospital in the Second World War and has now been converted into 29 apartments, retaining the principal rooms (library, dining, drawing and billiard rooms and others) for communal use, exclusively for over 55s.
The elegant “American Colony Hotel” in Jerusalem is an island of tranquility in a troubled city. The grand hotel has lived through all of Jerusalem’s serious crises. Everyone is welcome here, no matter where they come from or what they believe. The name “American Colony Hotel” goes back to a group of 19th Century American pilgrims. In its early days, the grand hotel was located among olive groves outside Jerusalem’s city walls. For over a hundred years, many parties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have shaken hands, eaten and drunk here together. People mingle here in a way they would never do elsewhere. Behind it all is the fascinating story of Anna and Horatio Spafford, who, after several tragic events, moved from the US to the Holy Land with a community of devout Christians. With diligence, skill, and an insistence on neutrality and tolerance despite political difficulties, they created a hotel in a truly special location. Its atmosphere continues to attract illustrious guests from the worlds of politics, diplomacy, literature, art and entertainment.
The mid-19th-century Gardens of Brodsworth Hall in South Yorkshire are striking. House and grounds are a perfect complement of Italianate green architecture and are linked by formal terraces with three staircases decorated by marble urns and recumbent — probably Italian — greyhounds acquired by the Italian sculptor Chevalier G. M. Casentini.
If this all feels rather unlikely in Yorkshire, that is because it reflects the taste of one man, Charles Sabine Augustus Thellusson, who came into an extraordinary inheritance in 1858 and devoted much of it to creating the hall and its gardens in his own personal style.
‘Today, he would be an oligarch,’ says Michael Klemperer, senior gardens advisor for the North and Midlands regions at English Heritage (EH), which now looks after house and gardens. ‘The money he received from the will was £700,000, which, with interest, equates to £140 million today.’ With the cash came the estate that had belonged to his great-grandfather Peter Thellusson, a Swiss financier, who had moved to London in 1760 and built up a fortune as a merchant and banker.
Charles Thellusson was an avid traveller, sailor and photographer. ‘He was a big, robust Victorian gentleman, a patrician walrus,’ notes Dr Klemperer, who sees Brodsworth as representing a transition between Continental styles and the Victorian era. ‘It is a garden that is interesting on a number of levels,’ he adds, citing influences as varied as Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) and Blackpool pier.
Boomers Daily 