Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s home – part 2

Posted on 24 October 2024 by Katrina

So here we are upstairs at Hill Top and as you can see this four poster bed is very ancient looking.

There’s also a fireplace in the room so it could be quite cosy, despite the harsh winters in this rural area of northern England.

Below there’s what looks like a Tudor chest to match the bed and lovely drawings of birds on a William Morris wallpaper design.

Hill Top is full of pretty things, Beatrix was a collector although it’s fair to say that it was the fashion to have lots of ‘stuff’ on show. I particularly love that perfect miniature chest of drawers in the photo below.

Another bedroom below.

I now can’t remember which room the photo below was taken in! That’s just about all of the photos that I took, apart from some photos of the things in Beatrix’s display cabinets. There are so many reflections on the glass though, I’ll have to see if I can get rid of them.

The house isn’t large, what is open to the public anyway, but as there were only two people in it, plus a couple of servants maybe, it’s a nice size for comfort. We visited outside the school holidays and it was very busy, we booked up ahead and also reserved a parking space, it would have been a bit of a nightmare if we hadn’t I think. The car park is about 200 metres away from the house, so that’s a short walk to it, past a few houses which are right by Hill Top, I can’t help thinking that the people who have those houses must at times be cursing the popularity of this National Trust property.

I have a few photos of the garden and surrounding countryside, but I’ll leave those for another time.

Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s home

Posted on 23 October 2024 by Katrina

While we were in the Lake District last month we visited Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s home. We tried to visit it about ten years ago but didn’t realise that it doesn’t open on Fridays for some reason – and guess who visited it on a Friday! It was very busy as you can see from the photo below. Beatrix gifted the house to the National Trust, along with a lot of land when she died.

As soon as you get through that doorway you are in the room in the photos below. These china plates were painted by Beatrix’s father, you can see where she got her talent from.

This fireplace/range is on the opposite wall from the photo above. As you can see the ceiling has wallpaper on it too. The door to the right of the range is what we in Scotland call a press, a built in cupboard.

Another cupboard below.

The next room opens off the first room and strangely it has a door knocker on it, as if it was a front door.

Beatrix loved collecting pretty things, she certainly enjoyed what was the first home of her own as her parents objected to her having a life of her own. When her books became so popular she was well able to buy this house outright, at last she could do what she wanted. You can even look at what she had inside her little desk.

Then we went back into the first rooom again to go up the stairs. I must say that from the photos you don’t get the impression of how dim the light is in this room, in fact the photo that I took of the dresser to the right of the clock didn’t come out at all, annoyingly. Beatrix used some of her own furniture in her illustrations.

I’ll do another blogpost about the rooms upstairs.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, The Hunterian, Glasgow

Posted on 16 October 2024 by Katrina

I’m just finishing off my Charles Rennie Mackintosh Humnterian posts with some random photos that I took. Below is very typical of his designs, a stained glass stylised rose.

The Hunterian even has what was the hallway of Charles and Margaret’s home in Glasgow, rebuilt but with the original furnishings.

The metal plaque below was designed by Margaret I think, she had a penchant for what some people described as ‘spooky’ figures.

I love the door below with its inset stylised glass hearts.

The cheval mirror below is in what was their bedroom, I made sure that my reflection wasn’t in the photo but in retrospect it might have made more sense than the reflection of a door which you can see. I love the design and all the wee drawers but I know that if I had it I would have to search in several of them before I found whatever I was looking for!

Anyway, if you’re a fan of C.R. Mackintosh then you will really enjoy a visit to The Hunterian in Glasgow.

Perth Museum, Scotland

Posted on 11 May 2024 by Katrina

We visited the new Perth Museum a couple of weeks ago, it’s mainly for local interest I think and was opened because what had been an Edwardian concert hall was no longer fit for purpose, so it lay there, rotting and unused. Some thought the building should be demolished, but it has been repurposed, successfully. The big attraction is the Stone of Destiny which has been taken from Edinburgh Castle, but we had seen that before so didn’t bother with it, you had to book a ticket for a time slot . I took the photo below of the Pullar’s dye works and cleaners. It reminded me that in one of her books Deborah Devonshire mentioned that they used to send their evening gloves to this place to have them cleaned, and it was so famous the address was just PULLARS, PERTH. I think the building itself is one of those Edwardian, on the cusp of Art Deco, designs.

The St Madoes standing stone was dug up from a field where it must have lain for years undisturbed, hence it being in unweathered condition, I think some of the designs on it look a bit Mackintosh-ish.

The swords were all found locally, possibly gifts for a river god, but there were so many battles around the Perthshire area they could just have been lost in battle. When I read a book about Montrose fairly recently I was amazed by how many villlages in Perthshire Montrose had ridden into that I had visited. Places where battles had been fought in the Civil War, or Wars of the Three Kingdoms as it now seems to be called.

More finds, including an amazing leather shoe.

In 1633 King Charles I did actually visit Scotland, and they had a bit of a do for him.

Below is one of the costumes from that dance. I imagine it was a bit more colourful back in its day.

King Charles’ surcoat apparently, below. There must have been a contrasting silk fabric showing through the slashes originally I think.

These neolithic carved stone balls which must have taken ages to make are a mystery, they’ve been found in lots of places in Scotland, but what were they used for?

There was a ‘Unicorn’ exhibition on the top floor of the museum, but that had to be paid for separately and as neither of us are much into unicorns we didn’t bother to visit it.

Leens, farm worker’s house, Netherlands

Posted on 4 March 2024 by Katrina

Way back in June last year we visited my brother and his wife in the Netherlands. Their neighbours suggested that we should visit the Burg at nearby Leens, so on a lovely sunny and warm day we did just that. You can see my previous posts on the Burg here and here. After visiting the rather grand house we went for a walk around the surrounding farmland and decided to visit the farm worker’s house which we could see in the distance. I’ve been to loads of stately homes in the UK but I don’t ever recall any of them also having a farm worker’s house that you could look inside. I suspect that most of the small estate houses in the UK have been modernised and rented out to holidaymakers.

Honestly, I would quite happily have moved in. The rectangular box in front of the chair in the photo below is lined with metal and you put hot coals in it and put your feet on it with your long dress draped over it, too keep your feet and legs toasty!

The wee house is surrounded by farmland, and the formal gardens of the Burg, as you can see below. It’s a beautiful area, despite there being no hills!

This is a photo of the outside of the worker’s cottage. (Copied from the Burg’s website.)

Robert Burns Cottage Garden, Alloway, Ayrshire

Posted on 17 August 2023 by Katrina

It ‘s quite a while now since we visited Robert Burns’s birthplace and I meant to blog about the garden soon after blogging about the cottage here, but I’m just getting around to it now.

Burns’ father planned to have a smallholding and market garden here but the plan didn’t quite come to fruition. You can walk around the area now and admire the wicker structures.

Below is a different type of ‘wicker man’.

Below is a wicker Tam O’Shanter on his horse Meg. Really well done I think.

And there’s a more formal topiary garden that you can walk around too.

It doesn’t take long to go around the cottage and gardens but the entrance price also includes entry into a very modern Robert Burns Museum and Centre not far away, and that is very interesting, and has a good cafe!

The Night Watch by Rembrandt

Posted on 26 June 2023 by Katrina

We’ve been to the Netherlands quite a lot as I have a brother who has lived there for decades, but we had never been to Amsterdam and Jack and I were both fed up having to tell people we hadn’t been there as it seems that that is the only place people visit in NL. So we rectified that a few weeks ago and took the train to Amsterdam from Friesland, a two and a half hour journey. We were heading for The Rijksmuseum, around a 30 minute walk from the railway station, everybody else seemed to be a tourist too!

We wanted to see everything at the museum and we DID see everything, but we especially wanted to see Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, and look what we saw when we got there!

At the moment most of the very large painting is covered with machinery and gadgets which are apparently measuring the vibrations of the canvas. It’s thought that tiny vibrations in the atmosphere are damaging it.

It’s just typical – when we went to see Chatsworth part of it was covered with scaffolding, see the photo below.

The famous bridge at Ironbridge was likewise obscured the first time we went there.

And of course when we sailed to the Bay of Biscay it was an absolute flat calm when it’s well known for being rough, something that I was looking forward to. I’m strange that way, I don’t like fairground attractions, just looking at them makes me feel sick but I’m never sea-sick.

Bernat Klein exhibition – National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

Posted on 1 February 2023 by Katrina

Last week we went to Edinburgh to visit the Bernat Klein exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland. It was welll worth the trip, and the long walk from Meadowbank where we had to park the car, well it helps to keep us fit I suppose. The exhibition isn’t huge, but it is interesting, I love his use of colour. It’s a free exhibition but if you can’t get there you can see some of it online here.

If you click on the photos of the other galleries you can see lots more of interest.

Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle – again – a quilt exhibition

Posted on 20 January 2022 by Katrina

One of the reasons we visited the Sunderland area so quickly again was because we discovered too late that there was a quilt exhibition on there, we had to go home before we could see it. So we drove back down there before the exhibition ended in late November. As you can see from the photo above the museum is very grand, and built in the French style as the architect was French.

The top floor of the museum housed the quilts. When I think of quilts from the North-East of England it’s the one piece of fabric Durham quilts which are decorated with all over stitching that I envisage, so I was surprised that they also have what they call strippy quilts. The quilts date mainly from the early 20th century.

And the more traditional patchwork quilts. I must admit that I started to make a patchwork quilt about 40 years ago, using hexagons, I didn’t get very far with it and bits are still languishing at the bottom of one of my many craft baskets!

So I am filled with awe when I see patchwork quilts, I suspect that they would be easier to make if it was a communal effort though.

The quilts below are proper Durham quilts – I believe. No patching together but still an awful lot of sewing involved.

Below is an intricate quilt design and matching curtain. Pink,blue and orange seem to have been very popular colours, I suppose they brightened up what was otherwise quite a dark existence.

I must admit that I thought that the exhibition would have been bigger than it was, but it was worth seeing and there is an interesting permanent exhibition of period women’s clothing from the 16th century to Mary Quant and Laura Ashley. I took lots of photos of the clothes, but they have all disappeared from the camera somehow, quite spooky really.

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more

Category Archives: Museums