July 29: Heaven, Hell, and Stamford

Wednesday morning we took a train out to a town called Stamford. From there, we got on a bus to go out to Burghley House. Burghley House was built by William Cecil in the 1500’s, and though the house is still lived in by the Cecil family, it is owned by a historical trust. Something a little different about Burghley is that the family owns their own herd of deer, and they just hang out in front of the house on the grounds. Apparently, the deer that are there now are descendents of the original deer. The deer are obviously very use to people being around, and are super friendly. They ran away from us when we were all in a group (if I were a deer, I would run away from 30 people coming towards me), but when we got into smaller groups, they let us walk right up and touch them and feed them. They ate right out of our hands. It was a little bit scary because most of them had antlers, but it was really fun at the same time. How often does one get to hand feed a herd of deer at a mansion in England? Because the deer just roam in the ‘front yard’, as you would imagine, there are deer droppings everywhere. A big thing in London is to ‘mind the gap’, referring to the gaps between subway trains and platforms, because apparently people fall into them and are injured or killed. So, every time you’re anywhere near a platform, you hear announcements and see signs saying ‘mind the gap’. As we’re walking across the lawn, dodging massive amounts of deer droppings, Brady came up with a new pegged term: mind the shat. No, that’s not a typo…it’s really shat. ‘Mind the shat’ was our phrase for the rest of the day. While Burghley was really pretty, it was not one of my favorites of the house we’ve seen. The furniture collections inside were incredible though. And the ceilings of the Heaven and Hell rooms were really amazing as well. The paintings on these ceilings depict, obviously, Heaven and Hell. The first one is Heaven, depicting happiness, luxuries, and comforts. I actually liked the Hell room better though. The ceiling in the Heaven room looked like many that we’ve seen, with clouds and angels and Gods. Light blues, whites, and yellows are common colors used. In the Hell room, though, the ceiling was very brave in my opinion. It was not a happy, flattering depiction. It was dark and painful looking. There was the face of a huge red beast in the center. The entire concept, and the details used to portray it such as the scenes and colors, was very different from most of the things that we’ve seen. I feel that it was a very bold step for a commissioned artist, and home owner. It added a completely different feeling to that particular room. It was really fascinating. After going through the home, we didn’t really have much time to go through the gardens because we had to be back on the bus. The bus took us into the middle of Stamford and dropped us off for a couple of hours to go through the town on our own. It was a really cute little town and was sort of a stereotype of what you would expect a little English town (at first, I was actually thinking it was stereotypical of New England, but then I realized that those stereotypes came from England). There were quaint little shops and cobblestone alleys; a large church in the center. Plus, it was raining, which seems to be a staple to the environment here. Megan, Kylee, Michelle and I only looked around the town for a little over an hour, and then we headed back to the bus to wait…and to get out of the rain. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. After getting back to London, I went to Leicester square with Amanda and Julia to buy tickets for Les Miserables the next day, then went home and went to Subway with Kylee. Though Burghley was not, in my opinion, one of the top homes we’ve visited, it still made for a pretty good day.

Note: I didn't charge my camera the night before, so no pictures from today. Whoops!