Happy Independence Day from England!

Our neighbors had generously shared their music until about 1 a.m., so I dragged myself out of bed Friday morning with perhaps not the best attitude in the world.  This was a weird morning anyway because we had to take the bus to Wollaton Hall by ourselves.  Nottingham has a really good public transit system, though, so we made it without too much trouble.  Wollaton sits in a nature preserve and deer park, part of which we saw as we walked up the hill to the house.  The building itself makes quite a first impression.  As Neville pointed out, the ornate detail of Wollaton is actually very different from the simpler but striking style of Hardwick.

Wollaton Hall

 We had some time to wander around inside before our guided tour.  Unlike Hardwick, Wollaton has little period furniture set up.  Instead, it houses the local council's natural history collection, including a lot of taxidermy, some minerals, and some insects (which I didn't examine too closely).  While this wasn't really what I'd expected from the outside, I thought it worked well, especially since the man who built the house, Francis Willoughby, was a naturalist.  The park was hosting several school trips; it was funny to see the kids reacting to the animals.  One little boy said, "Hello, lion!" very loudly to the large stuffed cat on display by the staircase.

Some kind of steam machine - I think

At lunch, a curator who knew Neville came over to say hi and offered to take us into the attached Nottingham Industrial Museum, which is only open on weekends.  This museum showcases, as you might guess, industry items connected to Nottingham, including portions about Boots Chemists, Players Cigarettes, and Raleigh bicycles.  It also had machines that made the lace for which Nottingham was once famous, some steam equipment, and other things that I couldn't identify if I wanted to.

We returned to the main house for our guided tour, which took us up a narrow, winding staircase to the ballroom at the top of the house.  I pity the ladies in their finery struggling up those steps, their skirts getting stuck in the tight spiral and their heels catching on the stones - especially laced up in corsets!  But the ballroom itself was amazing, so they probably found their labors well worth it.

Wollaton Hall ballroom

Descending a shorter spiral stair, we went out onto the "half roof," the portion that juts out partway up the face of the house.  Out here, the wind and the view vied for our attention - one whipped my hair into my eyes, the other lay before us in quiet grandeur.  

After the roof, our guide led us to the lower part of the house, which she called the Tudor kitchens.  She showed us the bells that hung in the servants' hall, the rooms where they baked pastries and salted meats for the winter, and the main kitchen.  Then we went even deeper beneath the house into the tunnels, all the way back to a deep pool called the Admiral's Bath, where it's said that the master of the house went to bathe in the (probably icy) spring water.  Upstairs again, the tour ended with Lord Middleton's secret quarters.  This was a sort of medieval panic room, complete with a chamber pot and trapdoor to a strongroom, where he could lock himself away behind a reinforced door should any unrest ever arise.

A bit blustery up here

Once our tour was completed, so was our course of the week.  Neville gathered us on the grass outside to discuss what we would take away from "Museums and Heritage," half-joking that he hoped he had ruined forever our simplistic enjoyment of museums.  He also bought us all ice cream!  While we ate our treats, McKenzie asked Neville about the rules of cricket.  It turned out he always has a portable set of equipment with him, so we all trooped down to the grass below the house to learn (or try to learn) how to play.  Marissa and I were the press, taking pictures while the others bowled, batted, ran, and occasionally scored.

When the game wrapped up, part of the group went to walk around the lake and see the deer.  A few of us preferred to take the bus back into town and return to the flat, where we made dinner and hung out until the others got home.  And so ends our first week-long course in England...on the Fourth of July!