Information about Cirencester
gleaned from the Internet ahead of a planned visit in September 2004
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APPENDIX
Additional Notes on Kelmscott Manor
"Gossip about an Old House on the Upper Thames"
Ellen and Guest in the Tapestry Room
Map for Kelmscott Manor ...
Map 4
There's a reasonable bus service between Cirencester and Lechlade on Thames.
Kelmscott Manor is about 3 miles further on along the river.
Visiting times are quite restrictive, and admission isn't cheap, but the powerful associations with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris make the visit worthwhile for enthusiasts.
The rest of us can just sit back and enjoy the story.
The manor house is shown (on this scale of map) as the last building, west of the road or track leading to the river.
Image produced from the Ordnance Survey
Get-a-map service.
Image reproduced with kind permission of
Ordnance Survey
and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.
1. Kelmscott Manor ...
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Kelmscott Manor - from www.KelmscottManor.co.uk
Alternative Link
Visiting
William Morris's manor house at Kelmscott is on the Thames, not far beyond Lechlade.
Morris loved the house as a work of true craftsmanship, totally unspoilt and unaltered, and in harmony with the village and the surrounding countryside. It looked to him as if it had ‘grown up out of the soil’, with ‘quaint garrets amongst great timbers of the roof where of old times the tillers and herdsmen slept’.
This link yields two pictures of Kelmscott Manor, one a modern photograph, the other (on the "Visiting" page) a drawing of 1892 from an early edition of "News from Nowhere". Let's use these pictures to get our bearings.
The house faces east. The photographer is standing with his back to the road, facing west. North is on our right, south and the river on our left. Notice, beyond the path leading straight to the front door, there's a secondary path off to the left. This leads to a small gate in the south wall of the garden.
Notice the two chimney stacks visible in the photograph. These are important recognition points for pictures taken from other angles. The chimney pots are square in section, all straight lines and sharp angles, and appear to be wearing academic mortarboards. There are further chimneys out of sight behind the tall building on the right.
The building between the two visible chimney stacks is the oldest part of the house, dating from the C16. The taller building to the north is a C17 addition. As Morris puts it in "Gossip", its "bigger lower windows and pedimented gable lights indicate a later date".
Using "Gossip" as our guide, we can identify the most important rooms.
The kitchen is to the left of the porch, and the old parlour to the right:
a delightful little room quite low ceilinged, in the place where the house is 'thin in the wind', so that there is a window east and a window west, and the whole room has a good deal the look of a particularly pleasant cabin at sea, were it not for the elms and the rooks on the west, and the green garden shrubs and the blackbirds on the east.
(Return for cross reference »Elms)
The ground floor of the C17 extension contains the room which took over as parlour:
now panelled with pleasing George I panelling painted white ... the windows in this room are large and transomed ... and I have many a memory of hot summer mornings passed in its coolness amidst the green reflections of the garden.
The first floor of the C17 extension contains the Tapestry Room. This is the room which Rossetti chose as his studio during the idyllic summer of 1871. It came to have special significance for Morris too.
For now, while we are looking at the photograph, notice the east facing window, mullioned and transomed with six lights, and a square hood. In the photograph, you can just make out a companion to this window, facing south. Morris particularly enjoyed the view from this south-facing window.
Finally, on the first floor of the C16 part of the house, above the old parlour, is the room which the Morrises adopted as their best bedroom.
2. Gossip about an Old House on the Upper Thames ...
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Text of "Gossip about an Old House on the Upper Thames" - from www.igreens.org.uk
An article written and published in 1895,
in which William Morris describes Kelmscott Manor in his own words.
Notice the two drawings - one is the familiar view of the front of the house, the other shows the view from the south facing window of the Tapestry Room.
Through its south window you not only catch a glimpse of the Thames clover meadows and the pretty little elm-crowned hill over in Berkshire, but if you sit in the proper place, you can see not only the barn aforesaid with its beautiful sharp gable, the grey stone sheds, and the dove cot, but also the flank of the earlier house and its little gables and grey-scaled roofs, and this is a beautiful outlook indeed.
Speaking of the Tapestry Room, Morris tells us:
The walls of it are hung with tapestry of about 1600, representing the story of Samson; they were never great works of art, and now when all the bright colours are faded out, and nothing is left but the indigo blues, the greys and the warm yellowy browns, they look better, I think, than they were meant to look: at any rate they make the walls a very pleasant background for the living people who haunt the room.
In the novel "News from Nowhere", Morris makes this room, and its tapestries, the setting for the poignant scene in which his hero realises for the first time that he can never be part of the new society which he has been exploring.
» "News from Nowhere" on the Tapestry Room
Photos of Kelmscott Manor - from www.arcaid.captureweb.co.uk
The work of a professional photographer who imposes strict copyright conditions.
I hope I'm not treading on any toes by just linking.
These photographs spring to life when placed against Morris's own words. We can recognise the "white panelled" C17 parlour, and the "low ceilinged" C16 rooms in the older part of the house.
Notice the photo of the Tapestry Room, with the coat of arms of the Turner family over the fireplace, and an open door leading into a low-ceilinged bedroom.
And notice the photo of the view south from the Tapestry Room. Compare this with the drawing in "Gossip".
One detail in the photograph, which we don't see in the drawing, is the gate in the south wall of the garden. This leads into a lane between the manor house and the farm buildings to the south.
Notice how the garden wall meets the house at this point. The front garden is an enclosed area, sealed off by the two walls, the house itself, and a tall hedge. This has a bearing on a passage from "News from Nowhere".
» "News from Nowhere" on the Garden
3. News from Nowhere ...
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Complete text of "News from Nowhere" - from etext.lib.Virginia.edu
A novel written by William Morris in instalments during 1890,
for publication in the newspaper of the Socialist League.
Later revised and published in book form in the early 1890s.
A member of the Socialist League goes to bed in Victorian London, has a restless night, and wakes up to find that he has been projected forward in time to a hot summer's day in the distant future. Once he has overcome his astonishment, he discovers that there has been a revolution, and the capitalist system has been replaced by an egalitarian society. The Victorian socialist makes friends with a young boatman, Dick, and together they journey through a very much changed England.
Somehow, they wind up making a leisurely trip by rowing boat up the Thames, with Kelmscott Manor as their destination. Along the way, a young girl attaches herself to the party. This is Ellen, whose lively interest in the old times before the revolution leads to a close friendship with the time-traveller. The middle-aged Victorian socialist feels himself falling in love.
And so, in just 2 paragraphs, we have reached Chapter 31. Kelmscott.
Dick and his friends go on ahead, leaving Ellen and the time-traveller to explore the manor house at their leisure. Here is a compressed version of what happens next:
We went in, and found no soul in any room as we wandered from room to room, from the rose covered porch to the strange and quaint garrets amongst the great timbers of the roof, where of old time the tillers and herdsmen of the manor slept.
We sat down at last in a room which was still hung with old tapestry, originally of no artistic value, but now faded into pleasant grey tones which harmonised thoroughly well with the quiet of the place. I became scarce conscious of anything, but that I was there in that old room, the doves crooning from the roofs of the barn and dovecot beyond the window opposite to me.
My thought returned to me after a minute or two, when I saw Ellen sitting, looking all the fuller of life from the contrast with the grey faded tapestry with its futile design, which was now only bearable because it had grown so faint and feeble.
This is the moment when Ellen realises that her guest has begun the process of withdrawal back to his own time. The Victorian, who has begun to hope against the odds for a future with Ellen, is appalled.
She looked at me kindly, but as if she read me through and through. She said: "You have begun again your never-ending contrast between the past and this present. Is it not so?"
"True," said I. "My heart is sickened with all the waste of life that has gone on for so many years."
"So many centuries," she said, "so many ages!"
"True," I said; "too true," and sat silent again.
She rose up and said: "Come, I must not let you go off into a dream again so soon. If we must lose you, I want you to see all that you can see first before you go back again."
"Lose me?" I said - "go back again? What do you mean?"
» "Gossip" on the Tapestry Room
4. More on That Tapestry ...
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The excellent biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti by Jan Marsh gives us further insight into the contents of the Tapestry Room.
He [Rossetti] made his studio in the largest, airiest room in the Manor's north wing, where the ancient, faded tapestry - "there since the house was built" - told the story of Samson.
"There is one very grisly subject, where his eyes are being gouged out, while a brass barber's basin lies at his feet containing his shorn locks, and Delilah looks over her shoulder at him while the Philistine leader counts out her wages to her," he told Dr Hake, smiling at the baroque style. [page 417]
That this old Flemish tapestry had survived until 1871 was due to the conservative attitudes of the previous owners.
Indoors, it was a Sleeping Beauty house ... It had been inhabited only by the family that built it 'in old times', whose coat of arms was on the chimney-breasts, and altogether everything was so well-worn that little seemed to have changed since the sixteenth century. [loc. cit.]
The old tapestry continued to survive beyond 1871 against all the odds. William Morris ran a business promoting his own ideas about interior decoration. Jane and Rossetti set about altering the place to suit their own tastes.
The rooms were repainted and papered, fireplaces were removed and retiled with the Firm's products, new curtains and cushions hung and embroidered. "The place looks now as if it had been in our use for years," Gabriel [Rossetti] wrote after four weeks' residence. [loc. cit.]
Yet Samson was still there.
5. The West Side of the House ...
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A Photograph of Kelmscott Manor - from www.computer-therapy.com/eph54
I am grateful to the photographer, Hugh Germanetti, for permission to link
to this large format version of a photograph of Kelmscott Manor from the SW,
which first appeared on a web page about a
visit to Oxford in July 2003.
THE TWO WINGS AT THE BACK
Here is William Morris's own description of the back of the house, from "Gossip":
The back of the house shows nothing but the work of the earlier builders, and is in plan of the shape of an E with the tongue cut out, [.
The two arms of Morris's "square bracket" are the NW wing on the left of the photograph, with the extra chimneys, and the SW wing on the right. Morris clearly thinks that both wings are C16.
In "Buildings of England", Pevsner appears to take a different view on the date of the NW wing:
The house is of c.1570. At the back, a wing of the same date projects W from the main house. In the late C17 a high N wing was added running E-W across the central block.
For Pevsner, the NW wing is all of a piece with the taller C17 block on the NE corner of the house.
USE OF SLATES
Returning to Hugh's photograph: this close to the house, we can see evidence for further things that Morris says in "Gossip". For example, look at the bit of roof above the heads of the two ladies in the foreground:
The roofs are covered with the beautiful stone slates of the district, the most lovely covering which a roof can have, especially when, as here and in all the traditional old houses of the countryside, they are 'sized down'; the smaller ones to the top and the bigger toward the eaves, which gives one the same sort of pleasure in their orderly beauty as a fish's scales or a bird's feathers.
William Morris has in mind the contrast with today's mass produced tiles, which give houses all over the country a uniform look. For the technical background to the old-fashioned way of using slates, see:
Cotswold Roofs - from www.Cotswolds.info
GARDEN
William Morris again, from "Gossip":
The garden, divided by old clipped yew hedges, is quite unaffected and very pleasant, and looks in fact as if it were a part of the house, yet at least the clothes of it: which I think ought to be the aim of the layer out of a garden.
The idea of dividing a garden into "rooms", each with its own distinctive character, was taken up by Ernest Barnsley at Rodmarton Manor. See: Rodmarton Manor Garden - from www.Rodmarton-Manor.co.uk
At Kelmscott, the division is done by a combination of walls and yew hedges. Note the garden wall on the left of the photograph. The other side of that wall will appear in a couple of paintings.
6. Paintings of the West Side of the House ...
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Paintings of Kelmscott Manor - from www.MorrisSociety.org
This link leads to two paintings of the West side of the Manor.
Notice that the image of the house in the two paintings is reversed left-to-right from the one to the other. I believe that the first painting we come to, on a green "oak and rabbits" background, is the correct way round.
Notice the heavily built chimney stack astride the roof ridge, marking the point where the C16 house meets the C17 extension at the NE corner of the house. We've changed our viewpoint from Hugh Germanetti's photograph, so that the wall on the visitors' left in his photograph, is on the viewer's right in the painting, and there's a yew hedge on the north side.
Wall and hedge together define another narrow garden "compartment", this one given over to lush flower beds, while doves from the dove-cot to the south of the house are much in evidence.
The artist, Marie Spartali Stillman, was one of Rossetti's circle (see "Chronology" below, 1869).
GARDEN IN 1890: SPARTAN OR LUSH?
Compare the "oak and rabbits" painting with these first impressions of Kelmscott Manor from "News from Nowhere":
My hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and we stood presently on a stone path which led up to the old house.
The garden between the wall and the house was redolent of the June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one another with that delicious super-abundance of small well-tended gardens ... The blackbirds were singing their loudest, the doves were cooing on the roof-ridge, the rooks in the high elm-trees beyond were garrulous among the young leaves, and the swifts wheeled whining about the gables.
And the house itself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of summer.
Contrast that with pictures of the front of the house, which all show severely pruned rose bushes standing in regimented rows on a well-manicured lawn. The drawing from 1892 confirms that this was so in Morris's time.
The image of roses "rolling over one another with delicious super-abundance" applies perfectly to the back garden, but seems out of place if we're talking about the front garden.
Yet the visitors are approaching the house from the east - notice the reference to "the rooks in the high elm-trees beyond the roof-ridge", and we know that these elm-trees are west of the house.»Elms
We can also see, by comparing photographs of the front of the house, that the front garden is enclosed by high walls on the South and East, with a gate in each, and there is a tall yew hedge on the North side. So the visitors wouldn't get a glimpse of the back garden as they approach the porch, whichever of the two paths they are using.
7. Dramatis Personae ...
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| Dante Gabriel Rossetti | 1828-1882 | Poet and Painter |
| Elizabeth Siddal | 1829-1862 | Rossetti's partner and model from 1850, wife 1860-62 |
| William Morris | 1834-1896 | Multi-skilled craftsman and writer, pioneer socialist |
| Jane Burden Morris | 1839-1914 | Morris's wife, model in many of Rossetti's later paintings |
| Jenny Morris | 1861- | Elder daughter |
| May Morris | 1862-1938 | Younger daughter |
Morris and Rossetti first leased Kelmscott Manor in the summer of 1871. At that time, Rossetti was 43 years of age, Morris 37, Jane 32, and the children 10 and 9.
8. Jane Burden Morris ...
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Pictures of Jane by Rossetti - from www.LiverpoolMuseums.org.uk
Note in particular "Water Willow" from 1871, with Kelmscott Manor
and the River Thames in the background.
Paintings 1868-1882 by Rossetti - from www.LiverpoolMuseums.org.uk
At least 10 of these 11 paintings from Rossetti's later years have Jane Morris as the model.
9. Dante Gabriel Rossetti ...
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The Rossetti Archive - from www.iath.virginia.edu/rossetti
A ponderous work of reference on Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
The most useful entry points include
Archive Contents
Biography
Chronology
The "Chronology" page can be used to view many paintings (it can also work with poems). Use the keyboard combination "Ctrl+F" to fast forward to the year, then look for an appropriate link.
Some examples: 1868 "Aurea Catena" 1870 "La Donna della Fiamma" 1871 "Water Willow"
10. William Morris ...
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William Morris (1834-1896) - from www.digital-brilliance.com/hyperg
William Morris (1834-1896) - from www.MorrisSociety.org
William Morris (1834-1896) - from www.Speel.demon.co.uk
The William Morris Society Web Site - www.MorrisSociety.org
The William Morris Gallery - www.lbwf.gov.uk/wmg
The William Morris Online Gallery - from www.lbwf.gov.uk/wmg
[ 24 September 2004 ]
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