Photo 1: Blenheim Palace is situated
in 2300 landscaped acres including
a large man-made lake with a bridge
leading to the main entrance.
Photo 1: Blenheim Palace is situated
in 2300 landscaped acres including
a large man-made lake with a bridge
leading to the main entrance.
 Photo 2: The Great Entry Hall |
On Thursday we drove out to
Oxfordshire, specifically to the village of Woodstock and the Blenheim Palace. This is a
truly impressive very large residence set on a completely landscaped 2,300 acres. The
money to build it was given by Queen Ann to the first Duke and Duchess of Marlboro to show
England's appreciation for his defeat of the French several hundred years ago. Ancient
European history is not one of my interests.) This place is still owned and operated
privately by the 14th Duke of Marlboro (not by the National Trust). Blenheim was (accidentally) the birthplace of Winston Churchill. He was related to the family, but his mother gave birth in the ladies' cloakroom while attending a ball. They have a very nice little museum about the history of Sir Winston including his honorary American passport and his paintings, some of which were used to make Hallmark greeting cards. (He was a family friend of the Hall's of Hallmark fame.) |
 Photo 3: The Long Library with the 1891 Willis Organ at the far end. |
Even though we didn't see him on
this visit, His Excellency the Duke treated us to a fine day at his palace. We trouped
through his house and saw all his good furniture, art work and china. The huge (palace-)
wall size tapestries of the history of the battle of Blenheim were most impressive. One of
his men took us out on a little motor launch on the man-made lake which flows under the
bridge leading in to the main palace entrance. Then we had lunch at the palace. (Well, it
was actually in the cafeteria in the basement, but the food was pretty good for
pre-packaged British fare.) I had an egg salad and tomato sandwich and a piece of
chocolate cake. When I was at Blenheim last, we took a horse drawn carriage ride around the grounds, but they were not running the carriages this season. This time we took a small-gauge train (which was a new addition) around through the sheep pastures out to the Duke's greenhouses and pleasure gardens. He keeps one of the greenhouses especially for butterflies. Even in the early autumn, there were a dozen different kinds of butterflies in the enclosure. There was a gift shop at the exit from the butterfly house and Lacy was very tempted to buy some of the beautiful plants we saw there, but there would have been no practical way to take them with us. |
 Photo 4: East Front from the Italian Garden |
Since we spent most of the day at Blenheim Palace, we got to Oxford toward evening and just drove through the center of town. We stopped and did some shopping. I bought some washcloths from the discount barrel and a bar of American Palmolive soap at Boswell's. I also bought a nice dark blue sweatshirt with the Oxford crest on it. The shop also had all the Oxford school ties, both the rep stripe kind, and the kind with little coats of arms figures on them. I asked the clerk if you had to be a member of an Oxford school to wear a school tie. He laughingly replied, "No, you just have to have 8 pounds, 50 pence!" I didn't buy a school tie, but I did buy a nice red tie with a reproduction of ancient music staffs on it. We got lost a few times trying to find our way out of town. It was then that we really needed a compass. It was overcast and dusk and we couldn't tell which direction we were heading. We didn't have a map of the town and of course there were no signs to help. |