Joe and I headed south today to visit Kirby Hall and Rockingham Castle.
Sorry, we forgot to take a picture until we were leaving.
Kirby Hall is a ruined Elizabethan Manor House with Jacobean additions and improvements which fell out of use towards the end of the eighteenth century and was left to decay into the twentieth century until the Ministry of Works took it over in 1930 and stabilised the ruin.
At that point they planted a rose garden which was an absolute dream when I visited in the late seventies. However, during the 1990s there was a massive programme of improvements; those in the house were largely successful, but the historically accurate parterre of grass and gravel is to my mind dull in the extreme and a very poor substitute for the roses.
The house is by Thorpe who co-incidentally was the designer of the short-lived hall build at Thornton Abbey which apparently fell down almost as soon as it was build for no discernable reason.
Rockingham Castle has never fallen out of use since it was built shortly after the conquest and has been a family home for most of that time and remains as such to this day. Following my friend Liz's example, I would happily take home the library-cum-sitting room - there was a small renaissance painting of a young girl which would fit my house better, but I'll opt for the room anyway.
E-mail received from Pam
"Rockingham Castle is wonderfully lived in. When we lived in Corby I was friends with one of the guides/friends of Rockingham and went with her to a couple of social events the family held for people who helped them keep the place going - openning up a family home was still quite novel in the early 70s - and she always said that it put everything in perspective when you saw the young children of the family racing matchbox cars across the hepplewhite sideboard."
We visited in the late 1970s the castle was bigger, but Kirby Hall was smaller. Odd thing, memory.
