Here’s a list of Oxford graduates with a PPE. I got a PEA at Durham; Psychology, English and Anthropology.
Anthropology fell into two parts: old bones and social anthropology. The latter appealed to me but I would have rather studied tribes closer to home; within the British Isles. We read up on Polynesians who swapped sea shells, nomadic tribesmen in the Middle East and all that. Of course these simple folk were clever enough to mislead the distinguished anthropologists trying to study them. Old bones defeat me. I am intensely interested in history – but not that far back. So today let’s start with a date that I can comprehend: 1754. My family had been ensconced at Barmeath for more than a hundred years. It was to be two hundred years before I was born in Hatch Street, Dublin.
We have been walking a lot in Richmond Park. Deer hunting, like coursing, was impeded by mole hills so a mole catcher had a small cottage in the park. Actually it only had one room. Today it would be trumpeted as a studio apartment in a unique location. Anyway in 1754 this bothy became a four-room cottage. In the 1780s George III installed one of his mistresses, the Countess of Pembroke, here. She employed John Soane to enlarge the building and a mole-catcher’s bothy became Pembroke Lodge.
To digress somewhat, Nell Gwynn was an unusual royal mistress in that she was given the Freehold of her house, 79 Pall Mall. Pembroke Lodge reverted to the Crown and Queen Victoria lent it to one of her Prime Ministers, Lord John Russell to use. Chequers was not given to Prime Ministers until 1917.
Today Pembroke Lodge remains part of the Crown Estate and is used for conferences, weddings and so on; not unlike Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park. They were preparing for a wedding yesterday morning.
It is a sprawling range of buildings, lucky to be Grade II listed. The Royal Ballet School has infinitely better premises in another part of the park.
Further to a recent post about toxic algae I spotted this sign yesterday.
