Tag Archives: National Trust

Treasurer’s House York, Mess and Muddle, M & S and evening prayer in the Minster

Located in Minster Yard just behind York Minster is Treasurer’s House, a dwelling with a multi-layered history. Situated over a Roman road, the original house was built for the first Treasurer of York Minster in 1091 and remained the Treasurer’s House until the Reformation.  

Over the centuries changes and additions were made to the building and in the 18th century it was divided into several residences, much of it falling into disrepair. Frank Green, a bachelor and wealthy industrialist, bought and restored each part of the house between 1897 and 1898, creating a town house as a showcase for his collection of antique furniture, paintings and objets d’art. And it’s been immaculately preserved.

Green donated the house and his collection to the National Trust in 1930 – it was the first historic house acquired by the Trust with its contents complete. One of his stipulations was that visits to the house should be by guided tour only.  His aim was for the house to be maintained exactly as he intended – he was a very exacting man with an obsession for tidiness – but he wanted people to enjoy and appreciate the house as he left it. Green threatened to return to haunt the house if his wishes were not respected creating the prospect of additional spectral sightings. Several ghosts are reputed to haunt the house – from Green himself to a lady in grey and shield-bearing Roman legionaries in green tunics in the cellar!

Frank Green’s restored Jacobean townhouse has thirteen period rooms, all representing a different style or era, which I found to be a bit of a mishmash. And while there are some very significant and noteworthy pieces, it’s quite an ad hoc collection and there are not many valuable paintings bar a painting by 16th century Dutch painter Joachim Beuckelaer in the grand hall. However, the house breathes the ethos of its owner, the character of the man as interesting as his collection.  

Frank Green was the son of Sir Edward Green, 1st Baronet and a Yorkshire industrialist. In those days there was a clear divide between being born into wealth and those who made their money from industry.  Frank’s wealth came from the family business – his grandfather invented the ‘economiser’ a device that improved the efficiency of hot water boilers. The Green family were keen on horses and hunting and there’s a picture in one of the rooms of Frank Green in Hunting Pink – he was Master of the York and Ainsty Hounds.  Clearly fashion-conscious – he favoured floppy bow ties and changed his clothes three times a day – and possibly vain to boot, there’s a picture of him wearing morning trousers with a pleat on the outside, following a trend – trumpeted as ‘sartorial innovation’ – set by King George V at Ascot Races in 1922.

He was keen on royal connections and hobnobbing. in June 1900 Edward VII and Queen Alexandra visited as Prince and Princess of Wales along with their daughter Victoria. It was in their honour that the King’s Room, Queen’s Room and Princess Victoria’s Room were so named.

The Queen’s Room

The drawing room is furnished as a formal salon in the Versailles style with chandelier candelabras, mirrors, gilt wood furniture and marquetry. The top of a marquetry kneehole desk dating from 1710 is made of brass inlaid in tortoiseshell and depicts scenes from a performance of the Comédie-Italienne.

The furniture in this room is stapled to the ground to prevent it being moved or re-arranged. He had no tolerance for “mess and muddle”, wanted everything in its place and instructions dotted around the house indicate he was quite the stickler – from requiring workers to wear slippers to having pieces of coal wrapped in newspaper to prevent unnecessary noise. A former kitchen maid related how Frank would inspect the kitchen, turning out any drawers he thought were untidy.

In his free time, he travelled around Europe in one of his Rolls-Royce cars seeking and purchasing items for his collection.  Three of his collectibles that I found of particular interest were a witch ball, a French Boulle clock (made around 1720) and a Queen Anne tapestry bed cover.  In the 17th and 18th centuries witch balls were made of glass and hung by windows to ward off evil spirits. The thinking was that witches would be scared off by seeing their own reflections. The belief that witches had the power to inflict death or illness simply by looking at a person or animal was widespread at the time.

The Boulle clock is an ornate Rococo piece with a calendar dial on the left and a lunar dial on the right. The calendar dial has 31 numbers around the circumference, the months of the year in French and the signs of the Zodiac, and the lunar calendar has the age of the moon in Arabic numbers and 24-hour tidal dial of the river Seine.

The Queen Anne period bedspread is displayed in the King’s Room, and the design includes a cornucopia representing fertility with pomegranate seeds on the male side (right) and a rose on the female side.  The Tapestry Room is lined with oak panelled walls and hung with Flemish tapestries from the 17th Century known as ‘stumpwork’, a form of raised embroidery. And a tapestry chair – associated with a ghost sighting – reminds us who is in charge – Please do not sit – by order of Frank Green.

One of the most over-the-top features of the house is the medieval banqueting hall.   The half-timbered gallery was created by removing the first floor above to open up the space. Complete with fireplace, minstrel’s gallery, stag’s horns and a massive polished oak refectory table from the 1600s, the great hall looks somewhat out of place in a town house!

Looking down at the Great Hall from the gallery
Minstrels Gallery

Another way he created a stately home-type of environment was by buying up family portraits – some of these line the grand William and Mary-style staircase – in house sales following the tax hikes and high death duties following the First World War when there was a massive shift in land, goods and property by cash-strapped aristocrats.

I went down to the Treasurer’s House café at lunchtime and chose a cuppa and a gluten-free scone, which arrived fresh from the microwave blown up in its plastic wrap like a puffer fish until I popped it with a fork! I had to pay extra for cream and jam, a good investment as the scone needed a bit of love…

I had planned to do a tour of the Minster but didn’t have enough time to do justice to the £20 entry ticket – and that’s because I wasted time ploughing through racks of crappy clothes – a symphony of largely synthetic fabrics – in Marks & Spencer in the afternoon.  I am told that quality M & S clothes are still available online or in bigger stores, but all was not lost as I bought some tights and a couple of cotton tops.

And, a silver lining, I stopped for a quick cup of tea in the M & S café, which had fantastic views back over towards the minster.  And I just made it – at a sprint – to the Minster in time for evening prayer (there’s no choral evensong on Mondays) at 5.30pm.

Evensong or prayer is held in the Quire in the eastern part of the cathedral which has seating for clergy and the choir and houses the high altar.  Going through the archway leading into the Quire with its gilded and painted ceiling bosses (recreations of the 15th-century originals following a fire in 1829) with views over to the great East Window, the largest expanse of medieval glass in the country, was a humbling moment. Note to self: next time I must do a tour of this magnificent place of worship dating back to the 13th century.

Back in England: family, fine art, an old flame, a (very) old tree and teeth on the table

A highlight of this trip was meeting up with an old flame for the first time in over 25 years. We met in the ‘80s in London when I was his lodger and the world was a very different place. After years of communicating via Christmas cards between America and Australia, we were, at last, going to be in London at the same time. The anticipation and getting ready were half the fun. Limited to a travel wardrobe and my hair out of shape, my beloved sister came to the rescue. Despite our combined age of just over 130, we were like teenagers again. She helped me get ready, backcombed my hair, lent me a coat and scarf and some jazzy earrings. It was wonderfully bonding.

Lance and I met at the Cavalry and Guards Club in Piccadilly. Honouring the Club’s formal dress code, he was wearing an elegant blue suit and orange silk tie – the word dashing comes to mind. He’d hardly changed at all, and we effortlessly took up where we left off in what proved to be a fun and fond evening. Dining on the best of British at the wonderfully-named Noble Rot in Mayfair, we reminisced, caught up on all the years in between and shared unrealistic ex-pat dreams – he and his family now live in San Francisco – about how nice it’d be to own a pad in London and to stay for three months every year.

He remains a stalwart drinker, a bon viveur, a keen golfer and, while politically poles apart from me, he’s stylish, has artistic sensitivity and impeccable taste. He always did have a dry sense of humour. Quote of the evening had to be “Well, Cha (he’s the only person in the world who calls me Cha) it’s good to know, as a former lover, that you have found happiness with a dog.”

In a small world moment, Lance had seen the exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350 at the Met that I was about to see at the National Gallery. In fact, some of the photos I am sharing are his.  It was an exquisite exhibition, and an extraordinary one with many of the works reassembled for the first time in centuries.

To quote from the National Gallery:

Simone Martini’s Orsini polyptych, split between Antwerp, Paris and Berlin is together again. His panels for the Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico altarpiece are reunited. 

Panels from Duccio’s Maestà, one of the largest and most complex altarpieces ever produced, on loan from Madrid, Fort Worth, New York and Washington and his ‘Virgin and Child’ and ‘Crucifixion’ triptychs come together.

Siena, I learnt, was one of the world’s richest cities and a major centre for artistic innovation and experimentation before the Italian Renaissance and up till the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348.  

What I loved was the sweep of the exhibition from the large, commissioned altarpieces, shimmering gold, to smaller paintings as well as ivory carvings, intricate enamelled boxes, reliquaries with fragments of bones, silks and textiles from Iran and Turkey, marble and wooden sculptures and illustrated manuscripts. The level of detail and the vividness of the colours – particularly the  blues, oranges, reds, purples and pinks – pulled me in as did the emotion and humanity in many of the pictures; the tender face of Mary, baby Jesus reaching up to pull aside the veil from his mother’s face and, my favourite, a picture of Jesus as a boy being told off by his parents and sporting a sulky teenage face and crossed arms.

Jesus getting scolded!

Seeing great nephews and nieces is always a joy on my UK trips, the catch being that it’s all or nothing, and I miss out on many of their milestones from trip to trip. I enjoyed reading Hairy Maclary to Dougie, who is now coming up for two, walking, talking and being schooled in the art of calling me Lot-Lot.

Up in Nottinghamshire with Mum, I caught up with my great nieces – Millie and Imogen from Yorkshire. Millie at 14 months was too young to recognise me but I got a great welcome Imogen, who is nearly five. I’d decorated the dining room with bunting and balloons, but much more exciting was doing the washing up standing on the step and playing peek-a-boo through the (rather old-fashioned) serving hatch between kitchen and dining room. That and ragging around with my eldest brother, the most devoted grand-father ever.

Mum had a rocky start to the year but has fought back amazingly well. So it was a triumph to manage a fun day out together and lay down new memories. At 93 it’s a case of carpe diem. We went down the A1 to Lincolnshire to see a heritage-listed tree – not just any old tree but possibly the oldest known apple tree in the world. The tree where Isaac Newton had his aha gravity moment.

The tree is in the garden of the Woolsthorpe Manor (now a National Trust property) where Newton was born in 1643. Inside the house is the room where he conducted his experiments on light using a prism, a recreated dining room, kitchen and bedroom with lots of heavy oak furniture, and exhibition on the 17th Century uses of urine. These ranged from mouth wash, skin softening, reducing wrinkles (I’m not up for trying it on the crow’s feet!) and stain removal to making gunpowder and warding off witches. It was also prized as a valuable side-hustle commodity you could sell to soap-makers and tanners – there was no Airbnb and Uber back then.

The apple tree, somewhat gnarled and bent, has proved amazingly resilient and survived being felled by a major storm in 1820. And, even better, the tree has offshoots all around the world including in Canada, the US, Argentina, Germany, South Africa, Korea, Japan and Australia. And the tree’s Australian descendants are not far from where I live.  

We enjoyed the spring sun but there was a biting wind, so we warmed up with a sandwich lunch in the barn and I enjoyed a nice British cuppa, one of 13.6 million served in National Trust cafés annually!

The weeks with Mum in her village near Retford in Nottinghamshire had some surprisingly busy days whether it was medical appointments, relatives coming over, neighbours popping in and out, the window cleaner appearing at the top windows early one morning when we were only half dressed, the boiler being serviced, supermarket shop-ups, a trip to the tip to get rid of rubbish from the garage – and managing all the things old age throws at you.

Mum and I had a few fraught moments due to an unholy alliance of old age irritations – hearing, digestion, eyes, poor sleep and anxiety topped off with a very nasty cold which we both succumbed to. Mum had two macular eye injections in one week, and for one of them I managed to leave all forms of payment behind on the kitchen table. Emerging from the injection feeling wobbly and seeing black dots, Mum wasn’t best pleased that I had no means of paying for the parking, which would likely result in a written penalty. You’re never too old to get a good ticking-off.  Luckily a kind-hearted woman gave us the £1.75.

However, that evening dinner was a disaster. I’d managed to make the sausage skins tough and the broccoli too crunchy (Goldilocks would have had a field day). Mum, cross and tired and unable to chew adequately, took out her dental plate and put it on the table where it sat accusingly. Mum’s teeth were out, and mine were firmly clenched. A bit of a Swords at Dawn moment!

Needless to say, we’d moved on by the next morning and, girls together, we both had 10.30am hair appointments – nothing like a haircut to make you feel better. Adjacent basins wondered my brother? Not quite but that’d be a good title for an Alan Bennett play!

I timed my trip to include Mother’s Day on my last weekend, and my sister came up from London to join us. Flowers, chocolates, coffee by the canal in Retford and roast chicken in the Aga. And time to read Mum a few more stories from Craig Brown’s A Voyage around the Queen, an entertaining biography with a difference. I bought it on the strength of this review from The Times:  “An unconventional tribute that offers a snapshot of almost a century of social history with a mix of royal insanity, and superior anecdotes, from farts and corgis to Paul McCartney and poets laureate.” And it absolutely delivered; Mum, I’ll be back to read you more extraordinary Royal tales (and tails) before you know it.

‘Flirt’, the sculptress’ umbrella and the Duldig Studio: House Museum Series 1 of 3

This weekend, as part of Open Melbourne 2017, I visited a few historic properties starting with a group of corrugated-iron houses in South Melbourne that were saved from demolition by the National Trust.  These portable homes were shipped out from the UK in the mid-1800s, during the Gold Rush, when tent dwellings were springing up to accommodate fortune hunters.

Forerunners of IKEA furniture, these dwellings were labelled, numbered, flat-packed in wooden crates and shipped overseas. The wood from the crates was used for wall linings, floor boards and partitions – you can still see the initials of one of the property speculators RP (Robert Patterson), on one of the walls at 399 Coventry Street. Abercrombie House (originally from North Melbourne) was moved onto the Coventry Street block by the National Trust in two halves to save the many layers of wallpaper that tell the story of how the house evolved over time.

But the stand-out property was the Duldig Studio, a house museum in Malvern East, once home to émigré artists Slawa Horowitz-Duldig and Karl Duldig who settled in Melbourne after World War II. Forced to leave Vienna at the time of the Anschluss in 1938, the Duldigs settled in Melbourne after 18 months in Singapore and two years in the Tatura internment camp. Both Viennese modernists, Karl was a sculptor and Slawa a sculptor and painter. One of Karl’s sculpted masks is owned by the  NGV in Melbourne.

Slawa was not only a successful artist– she trained at two prestigious art schools in Vienna – she also invented the first foldable umbrella and there are prototypes of her ‘Flirt’ model on display at the Burke Street property. Fleeing Nazism, Slawa was, however, forced to sell the rights to her umbrella, but the royalties she had earned paid for furniture which she designed and had custom made. With rooms in the house opened up specially for Open Melbourne 2017, we got to see her furniture.

And this is what makes the story of this couple so extraordinary. Before they fled Austria, Slawa saved everything from their apartment in Vienna, and her sister Aurelie known as Rella, hid everything away in a cellar in Paris, keeping a meticulous inventory of every item.  Even more amazingly, their cache escaped detection by the Nazis and was shipped to Australia on the aptly named Rembrandt in the 1950s.

They kept everything from dining settings to their artworks, furniture, silk curtains, lamps, ceramics, sculptures and books. Given they lost all their family bar Rella to the Holocaust, it’s consoling that their possessions survived. It’s not as if they were hanging on to clutter – I am thinking of Marie Kondo here, Queen of Life Laundry and author of The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up, whose rule of thumb is to keep things only if they spark joy. The Duldigs were people for whom art was a way of life – Karl carved a sculpture out of a potato while they were in Tatura –  and everything around them was an expression of their artistic sensibility.

Part of the Secession Movement (formed by a group of Viennese artists including Gustav Klimt in 1897), which represented a move away from more traditional and conservative forms, the Duldigs created interiors where everything was designed to be beautiful and part of the artistic whole – even their dog had a Persian carpet bed! Materials were incorporated into the design in such a way that they were seen – from the Salzburg stone supporting a sculpture and lattice leather straps in a chair designed by Slawa to the grain of the wood on their hand-crafted bedroom wardrobe. Even their china and dinnerware survived the high seas from the chunky ceramic coffee cups and plates in the living room to the fine blue, white and gold china in the dining room. Throughout the house the mixture of art forms –  from primitive to African, Asian and classical – is characteristic of the modernist aesthetic.

(Picture taken from the Duldig Studio brochure)

At the back of the property are the sculpture garden and Karl’s studio, complete with kiln, coloured dies in jars (the couple were also both ceramicists and took commissions) and a bakelite phone, the receiver still crusted with dried clay. Just as it would have been when Karl was working, the studio remains packed with maquettes as well as finished works in wood, bronze and clay. Both Slawa and Karl taught to supplement their earnings – Slawa at St Catherine’s, where she inspired many of her students to pursue their love of art.

Shortly before her death Slawa told her daughter Eva de Jong-Duldig, who is now in her 70s and a patron of the Duldig Studio, not to throw anything away and to keep everything. Accordingly, their family home was opened to the public in 1996 and is now a museum and art gallery. Leaving us a rich legacy and insight into their creative lives in Vienna, Singapore and Australia the museum owes its existence to their practice of documenting and curating their lives with passion and purpose.

Among the sculptures and paintings on display are some of the letters Slawa exchanged with her sister, Rella, over a period of 30 years. The sisters only met up again once in the 1960s so these letters are a poignant reminder of a time when hand-written correspondence was central to people’s lives, helping to overcome separation and distance.

And, most moving of all, is Karl’s simple but heartfelt love letter to Slawa, written after her death in 1975, describing their life together “as a continuous musik.” (Karl’s German spelling of music). How heartening it is to see the essence of the Duldigs and their cultural contribution preserved for future generations.