The London Season - "Coming Out"

You often hear, when reading literature about the Georgian and Victorian period or watching films and television programmes set in this time, about “the season” in London. This colloquial term refers to a period of time every year when aristocratic and gentry families would travel to London from their country houses and would live in London socialising and visiting friends and family.

A Drawing Room at St James Palace
Photo Source: Regency History Website

The London season itself first came into being as wives and families of members of parliament accompanied their husbands to London for the parliamentary session and needed events and things to do to keep them occupied during this time. The parliamentary session ran roughly from October/November to May/June and so families would find themselves in London for half of the year and subsequently needed activities to fill their time.

Visiting friends, family and acquaintances, visiting the opera and the ballet, walking in the numerous parks, attending an exhibition or visiting a museum, and of course public and private balls and assemblies were all diversions for the aristocracy and gentry to take part in whilst they stayed in London and as the season became more popular, more and more social events were available.

As this habit became a regular occurrence each year, the popularity of the season began to grow and soon it became a fashionable thing to do as well as practical. For one to remain popular within society circles and indeed in order to broaden one’s social circle, you had to travel to London for the ‘season.’

Lady Rose being presented at Court in Downton Abbey
Photo Source: NumberOneLondon

Mothers began to recognise that by coming to London and attending a range of public and private events, that eligible bachelors were more accessible for their daughters to meet than when they were sequestered away at their country estates. Therefore, the London season became known as a marriage market as well as a parliamentary event and young women who were eligible to marry, planned their ‘coming out’ into society balls for during this period, knowing they would be able to attract more bachelors and therefore increase their chances of meeting their future husband.

‘Coming out’ in society marked a change from child to adult and would mean a daughter could take part in more social events, would be able to go out on an evening to social events, and of course would be able to find a husband and get married. A young lady ‘coming out’ into society was marked by a ceremony where the young woman would be presented to the monarch at Court. This tradition is still upheld to this day with young women from some families still being presented to the monarch at court.

Georgiana, 5th Duchess of Devonshire with her infant daughter
Georgiana who would become the 6th Countess of Carlisle
Photo Source: Wikipedia

Georgiana, 5^th Duchess of Devonshire organised a lavish coming out ball for her eldest daughter Georgiana Cavendish during the London season of 1800 where she met George Howard, Viscount Morpeth who was the heir to the 5^th Earl of Carlisle and lived at the palatial Castle Howard in North Yorkshire. George Howard fell in love with Georgiana and courted her for a year, spending time getting to know the beautiful young woman and the following year they married.

The London season was at its most popular in the 19^th century and since the twentieth century has disappeared as the nature of society and London as a city has changed. Aristocratic families began to give up their London houses, particularly after the first world war, and an increasing number of public events meant that it was harder to maintain exclusivity. From this time on, aristocratic families tended to move back to their country estates, privatising their balls and instead favouring the ‘country house, house party’, an altogether more exclusive, invite only event.

Lost Country House Postcards

Photo owned and reproduced with kind permission from Country House Postcards Facebook Page

Postcards may be a dying art these days with the rise of social media, email and television, and especially the internet which allows us to research and see pictures of any place on the planet. However, some people do still enjoy picking up a postcard with beautiful images of the places they visit, writing a small greeting on the back, and sending it to friends or family.

In previous decades however, before cameras were as widely available and before televisions were in everyone’s homes, the only way for friends and family to be able to see where you had been on holiday would be for you to send them a postcard or to bring postcards back with you from your holiday. This did not just mean holidays abroad, this also applied to visits across the UK.

One of the trends of the early 20th century included purchasing and collecting country house post cards. These were photographs of the thousands of country houses across the UK. These post cards may have become lost in the annals of time were it not for the fact that in the first half of the twentieth century, the country house went into decline.

Houses were taken over for the war, sons did not return from war, the fashion for country house ‘parties’ were not as popular any more, servants began to think of other careers, and the economy changed to the point that country houses being run in the way they were during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, was no longer feasible.

In the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, hundreds of country houses were abandoned by families who simply couldn’t afford the upkeep any more. Many of them suffered as a result of being commissioned and misused by the war office during the first and second world wars, and others were simply left closed and empty for decades. Decay as a result of poor maintenance occurred quickly and were eventually demolished when they had become a hazard or when the owner decided to sell the land. This is before buildings could be listed and protected.

Now, in the twenty first century there is an increasing popularity for country house postcards which can be bought at craft and antique fairs which document many of the UK’s lost country houses. These postcards may be some of the last images we have of some of the finest architectural buildings of the 19th and 20th century.

These Longleat postcards are currently on sale on eBay:

Although as we know Longleat is not 'lost,' it gives you a good taste of what the postcards were like. 

Let's instead have a look at some houses that we know are now 'lost' . . . 

Anyone who lives in West Yorkshire knows about Saltaire and Salts Mill. The below house, Milner Fields was built for Titus Salt Jr. but the house was said to have terrible bad luck and was never a successful country house pile. It was completed around 1873 and demolished in the 1950's.

Both images from Pinterest

Eaton Hall in Chester was probably one of my favourite lost country houses due to the scale and the gothic grandeur . . . it's like something from a horror movie. How I would love to be able to travel in time and explore this house! The Eaton estate was home to the Grosvenor family from around the mis 1440's and their fortune was vast. This house was completed in 1881 and cost £32.5m in todays money to build. Unfortunately, post WW2 the family's fortune could not sustain such a sizeable house and it was demolished and replaced with a newer, smaller (although not small in our terms) house. Eaton Hall is still very much the home of the Duke of Westminster and some of the outbuildings of this great Victorian home did survive demolition. Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area!

These images are featured on and belong to www.lostheritage.org.uk which is one of my favourite websites on the internet! Please do go and check it out as it has many more photographs of lost country houses. . . you could get lost yourself looking at them all!

I hope you enjoyed this quick post . . . see you again soon! x

A History of Diary Writing

Photo Source

A diary or journal has been used for hundreds of years as a way for an individual to record the events within their daily lives, leaving a unique look at one person’s perception of the world which can be looked back upon in future years. Some diarists subsequently publish their diaries, or have them published by members of their family.

Perhaps the most famous diary in the world is that of Anne Frank, the German-born Jewish girl who hid from the Nazi’s in an attic with her family. At just fifteen when she died, her diary captured the hearts of everyone who read it for its frank and innocent view of such horrific times.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine

I myself kept a diary for a number of years during the first years of high school, recording the minutiae of daily life, as well as all my teenage crushes (there were a lot!). I recently read back over the diaries and was both embarrassed at their content and also impressed that I managed to commit to writing entries almost every day. In subsequent years, I have tried to take up journal writing again but I continually fail.

It made me think . . . was this due to a specific reason? Are our lives now too full of technology and other stimulants to make diary writing feasible? I have decided to take a look back through the centuries at when diaries became popular and how diaries were used to see if there are any reasons why they were more or less popular over different centuries. . .


The Diary’s Origin

The word ‘diary’ comes from the Latin word diarum which meant daily allowance and the earliest examples seem to come from the Middle and East Asian cultures. “The earliest surviving diary of this era which most resembles the modern day was that of Ibn Banna’ in the 11th century. His diary is the earliest known to be arranged in order of date (ta’rikh in Arabic), very much like modern diaries.” [George Makdisi, "The Diary in Islamic Historiography: Some Notes". History and Theory. 1986. pp. 173–85.]

The Rise of the Diary

Diarising was really established in England during the seventeenth century. This timing coincides with the reformation when the bible was translated into English for the first time, which meant that more men and women were learning to read and write so that they could have a more personal relationship with the bible and with God. Alongside this, with the invention of the printing press, paper became more widely produced and available for people to purchase. What with an increase in literacy and access to writing materials, diary writing began to increase in popularity.

One of the most famous diarists of the period Samuel Pepys ‘seems to have begun his diary because he was aware of the crisis affecting the nation at the start of 1660’ [source]. It seems that living within a society where there are significant political events happening is likely to encourage people to keep a journal. 

An excerpt from Pepys's diary concerning Charles II's investigations into the affairs of the Navy Office [source]

Diaries really seem to have hit the height of popularity between the 18th and 20th centuries and authors such as Jane Austen show their characters writing in their diary about their lives. This could be again due to the fact that the physical diary was more readily available in shops and were more affordable. Secondly, this is a period in history which brought great change to England. There was the industrial revolution, the building of the railways, the expansion of the British Empire, steam power and much, much more! Perhaps we can surmise that, like Samuel Pepys in the 17th century, diarists living in the later centuries were compelled to write in a way to record the changing world around them.

Men and Women, how they differ

Whilst men seem to have been keen to keep a diary in order to record major events in their lives, both personally as well as major social events, women’s diaries were much more about their personal lives and the lives of people around them. They were filled with observations about different people and so were more emotionally written, where men were more likely to record in a non-emotive, almost catalogue style.

Many historians have relied upon these diaries in order to find out more about the intimate personalities of those who have lived before us, as without those diaries, historians would have to reply upon newspaper articles and letters. Both of these can be limiting in that newspapers can be biased and articles about specific people are usually only written when something significant has happened to them such as a birth, death, marriage or scandal, and letters, due to their very nature tend not to be very confessional. It is quite rare for someone to spill their deepest secrets to a family member or friend, but they are much more willing to do so in a diary which no one may read. In this respect then, the diary is the closest historians can come to knowing a historical person without having been with them when they were alive.


So when I had looked into this and thought about it a bit more, I realised that there were several reasons why diary writing may be dying out; we are a much more conversation based society now, we know a lot more about the lives of those around us from television and mass media, and also the invention of social media allows us to record our daily lives in an almost technology based diary.

Perhaps all social media users are writing a diary, it’s just the medium that has changed. I guess we will have to wait for historians in the future to decide!

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown - Who Was He?

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown by Nathaniel Dance, (died 1811) - National Portrait Gallery: NPG 1490

During the 18th century if you owned a country house and wanted society people to visit and admire your stately seat, then you needed to ensure that the architectural style of the house and gardens were contemporary and 'in vogue'. Throughout the period there was one single name which was on the lips of the gentry when it came to updating their estate and gardens, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown.

Brown was born in 1716 in a village in Northumbria called Kirkhale, to William (a land agent) and Ursula Brown. He was the fifth child and so whilst he was not born into poverty, he certainly was not born to privilege or into the gentry. He was educated at Cambo School until the age of 16 when he left to become a gardener's apprentice at the same estate that his father worked at. He worked there until the age of 23 where his interest and passion for gardening was fostered by the estate owner Sir William Loraine.

Following this role, Brown moved to Stowe which was his breakthrough position. As under gardener to William Kent he was privy to great opportunity as well as expertise. He arrived at Stowe in 1741 and within ten years he had moved to London with his family to set up his own landscape design company.

"Brown's career as a landscape architect spanned over 50 years and he was responsible for transforming huge expanses of the British Isles and beyond into the natural Arcadian parkland that is so synonymous with English scenery. In reality he didn't so much design a landscape as allow nature to dictate its own surroundings." (Capability Brown & Belvoir: Discovering a Lost Landscape from The Duchess of Rutland and Jane Pruden).

Whilst the gentry loved Brown and were keen to employ him on their lands, the local village people must have quaked in their books when they learned he was to be employed at their local gentry's estate as Brown was known for wiping out villages if they got in the way of his vision or were too close to the country house in question.

Audley End, Nuneham and Bowood were just a few of the villages which were demolished either as a way to increase the separation between the poor of the villages and the rich of the 'big house', or because they sat in direct view of the house and therefore spoiled the rural view he was trying to create.

Badminton House - an example of Brown's work

The idea of Brown's landscape was to give inhabitants an visitors of the house an unbroken view across a landscape of rolling hills, fields, trees and lakes. If a village or church got in the way, it ran the risk of either being totally demolished and its inhabitants forced to move elsewhere, or, it could be moved and relocated elsewhere.

Brown was also criticised for the fact that when his landscapes were introduced at a country estate, they often wiped out any formal gardens, meaning many historical garden features were lost.

Whatever side you come down upon, either a staunch anti-Brown or Brown lover, one thing can be certain - Lancelot 'Capability' Brown designed some of the most famous landscapes in the country including Chatsworth, Blenheim Palace, Althorp Hall, Longleat, Hampton Court Palace, Harewood House, Kew Gardens, Warwick Castle and Stowe Landscape Garden among hundreds more.

New Period Dramas Coming Soon!

I am sure it will not surprise you to discover that I am a serious period drama junkie! I have enjoyed watching adaptations of novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility as well as period dramas written specifically for TV and the big screen such as Gosford Park, The Remains of the Day and of course Downton Abbey. If you read one of my previous blog posts on films that inspired my love of country houses then you may have had an inkling of this!

For as long as I can remember there have been period programmes and films released and they seem to be just as popular today as they ever were. I have just recently discovered Poldark - a lovely drama telling the stories of people who lived on the Cornish coast in the 17th century. It has sweeping views of the coast as well as love stories, jealousy, tragedy and treachery. It is a perfect Sunday afternoon watch.

I have now watched to the end of season two and whilst I anticipate season three, I thought I would look for some other period dramas which are coming to our televisions and cinemas in the next few months . . .

Poldark Season 3

Photo Source: DigitalSpy

This cornish period drama returns to BBC One on Sunday evenings in June, so we don't have that long to wait. Whilst the second season was aired in the Autumn last year, the third season has surprised fans by being brought forward to the Summer. Whilst programme creators deny this is to avoid a clash with season two of Victoria - ITV's current period offering starring Jenna Coleman, it is likely that this is a major reason for the change so that both programmes are not competing for viewers. Either way, I'm not complaining as I get to watch my favourite red-haired character sticking it to the men sooner than expected!

We don't know much about what to expect in season three, although we know there will be a new vicar, Osborne Whitworth, who will be causing havoc in the small Cornish town. I do hope the writers don't go down the usual 'witch hunting' path though! There will also be some appearances from Demelza's brothers, who up to now have not featured in the series.

Jamestown

When I first drafted this blog, Jamestown had not started but due to a delay in my posting ability, this new period drama has recently started on Sky One. It is an 8-part series from the producers of Downton Abbey and written by Bill Gallagher who wrote 'Lark Rise to Candleford' and 'The Paradise' which is another one of my favourite shows. I was initially disappointed to hear Julian Fellowes was not writing it, but then again I would also like to see him work on a film again, like Gosford Park, rather than tie himself into another tv series.

Photo Source: Good Housekeeping

So we are three episodes in to this season which charts the early days of Jamestown, the first English settlement in Virginia in the early 1600's. At the moment I have to say I sit on the fence with this programme. I really enjoyed the first episode which saw a shipment full of women bought and brought over from England to marry the camp of men who had been in the colony for 12 years establishing the tiny town and who were now ready to marry and reproduce. I think this is a fascinating historical fact which I didn't realise happened until the programme started. Whilst these women got adventure and the promise of a new life, they were also pre-assigned husbands and as we see in episode one, they aren't necessarily kind to the women. Inequality of the sexes is one of the main facets of the programme, which I think is great that they show, but I have to say some of the female characters they have written I really don't like. Also everyone in the show appears to be from Yorkshire or Lancashire . . . I'm going to have to research that to see if that is a historical accuracy or not!

Catch up on the episodes on NowTV and let me know what you think!

Dunkirk

Photo Source: TheYoungFolks

Arriving in cinemas in the UK and US on 21 July this year, this period drama starring Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy and Kenneth Brannagh, three of my favourite male actors, promises much as it tells the harrowing and true story of the evacuation of allied soldiers from the war-torn beaches of Dunkirk.

Whilst I usually prefer period dramas based around country houses or a romantic theme, I am also captivated by war movies. I will admit that I don't know much about Dunkirk other than what you learn in history lessons at school and what I learned through the movie Atonement, another amazing period movie. I am very excited to watch this movie, written and directed by Christopher Nolan who brought us amazing films such the Batman Dark Knight movies, Inception (still one of my favourite films) and Interstellar. He's an intelligent writer and an amazing director, so I have high hopes for this movie.

Outlander Season 3

This has far and away been my favourite period drama of the last couple of years. The soundtrack is phenomenal, written by Bear McCreary, who also wrote The Walking Dead theme tune, but the story is everything you want from a highland drama. There are beautiful women, handsome rugged kilted men, and stunning sweeping views of the highlands of Scotland. I love the strong female characters in this series, especially Jennie, Jamie's sister!

Photo Source: iTechPost

Season three is the first season run by US TV company Starz, the first two seasons created by Amazon themselves, and this makes me a little wary. Programmes from Starz are not usually my favourite as they struggle with authenticity in terms of their costume, set design and general historical accuracy. They seem to choose to sexualise their female characters and sacrifice history for colour and rich settings.

Hopefully this will not be the case with season 3 of Outlander, and it will continue to be just as good as the previous seasons. This season we see Claire and Jamie continue their trans-century relationship, struggling initially to come to terms with being separated and then eventually meeting up again. Whilst the release date has not been confirmed, we do know the show will air in September, getting us ready for an Autumn of period drama.

So there you go, here are some of the top picks in period drama coming to our screens this Summer. I will be back later in the season to tell you more about what to expect in the Autumn and running up to Christmas - usually prime period drama time!

Make sure you follow my country house hag Facebook page and please forward this post on to friends and family who may not be familiar with this blog but may enjoy it!

See you soon!

The Women Featured in my Upcoming Book

Dunham Massey in Cheshire

If you have read some of my previous blog posts you may know that I am currently writing a non-fiction book about women in the English Country House. I thought I would introduce the historical female characters who I am writing about in my book. These women were incredible characters, their strength in the face of tragedy and their desire to make an impact on the world around them, provide stories which are begging to be told.

My book is focused on the 19th century as a whole, with my oldest woman born in 1780 and my youngest dying in 1905 although there will be some historical context from the 18th and 20th centuries as we trace the world they were born into and the world they left behind.

So, with no further ado, lets meet my four incredible women, who, as I get to know them more, feel like friends . . .

Lady Mary Isham
b.1787 - d.1878

Mary was born at Elm Park in Co. Armagh in Ireland to Deborah de Robillard Champagne and Samuel Close. She met Col. Justinian Isham of Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire who was stationed in Ireland at the time as captain of the militia. They were married in 1812 and in 1818 they moved to Lamport Hall when Justinian inherited the estate and his baronetcy. Throughout their time at Lamport, Justinian was known as 'the silent baronet' due to the fact he was more interested in his library and Mary was more interested in developing the Hall. She was a strong woman, confident in her beliefs and opinions, but she was also an incredibly generous woman, giving thousands of pounds to local charities and acting as patron to charities and societies. During her time at Lamport Hall she managed the rebuild of the Hall, estate and parkland, she ensured their tenants were well looked after and she also raised a family. We will follow Mary's entire life, looking at her achievements and the incredible tragedy she suffered.

Lady Mary Isham of Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire 

(reproduced with permission of Lamport Hall Preservation Trust)

Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville
b.1785 - d.1862

Harriet is probably one of the most well-known women in my book, or rather her mother was. Born in 1785 at Devonshire House in London to Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire and William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, she was the second daughter and was supposed to have been a boy. She was raised in the curious household of the Devonshire's, observing the odd relationship between her mother, father and Lady Elizabeth Foster, her father's mistress. She married in 1809, aged 24 to Granville Leveson Gower who had been a friend of the family for many years and who for almost a decade had been the lover of Harriet's Aunt, Lady Bessborough. This seems like an unusual set up, but considering the upbringing Harriet had, it's unlikely that she would have thought too much about it. She even welcomed her Aunt and husbands two illegitimate children into her home. I am exploring the nature of Harriet's upbringing and her unusual marriage, looking at how this influenced her later life and her position as a wife and mother.

Katherine Grey, Countess of Stamford and Warrington
b.1826 - d.1905

Katherine is my youngest woman and one of the least known, but her story is remarkable. She was born into a circus family in London and grew to become one of the most famous circus performers in London by the 1850's. She performed as a bare-back horse rider with her sister at Astley's Circus and she was spotted by the eligible George Harry Grey, 7th Earl of Stamford and Warrington who, captivated by her incredible beauty, whisked her out of her circus life, married her, and took her away to Dunham Massey, his principal estate in Cheshire. However, not everyone thought that the marriage was appropriate and the young couple found themselves having to defend their marriage, although, as a young Earl with no immediate family to control him, George Harry was used to doing whatever he wanted. They were snubbed by the gentry and even Queen Victoria before deciding they would move to Enville Hall in Staffordshire, another of the Earl's properties, where they lived happily for twenty years. In my book we look at George Harry's upbringing, his marriage to Katherine and the early years of their marriage at Dunham Massey.

Elizabeth Manners, Duchess of Rutland of Belvoir Castle

(reproduced with permission of Her Grace, Duchess of Rutland)

Elizabeth Manners, Duchess of Rutland
b.1780 - d.1825

Elizabeth is one of my favourite characters that I am writing about - although I have to admit I love them all! She was born at Castle Howard in North Yorkshire to the 5th Earl and Countess of Carlisle. She was vaguely related through marriage to Harriet whose sister Georgiana was married to Elizabeth's eldest brother George. Elizabeth married John Henry Manners, the 5th Duke of Rutlnd in 1799 when she was just 19 and moved to Belvoir Castle in Rutland. She was hugely disappointed when she arrived at the Castle, finding an outdated and dilapidated house in need of renovation and money. She took it as her mission to improve the Castle and throughout her relatively short life she worked continuously to develop the Castle that you see today. She was also unfortunately the recipient of several tragic events - losing three of her children, her eldest daughter and two baby boys, as well as a fire in 1816 which ravaged the Castle, burning away lots of her hard work. She is an incredible woman - probably the strongest of the bunch, and I can't wait for you to get to know her more.

So that's it! These are the four main women in my book. I will be making references to other women throughout the book to lend context to the period but these four women will form the bulk of the story. We will be looking at upbringing, marriage, home life, children and tragedy - following their lives and challenging our stereotypes of women of the period.

I can't wait for you to be able to read this book . . . . I just hope you like it!!

p.s.:

Please do share this webpage with your friends and family if you know they like country house history or you think they would enjoy my book!

A Different Big Ben Tower?! Somerleyton Hall

(photo credit: By Evelyn Simak, CC BY-SA 2.0, https///commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14253512)

The first time I came across Somerleyton was when I watched a Most Haunted episode numerous years ago and they investigated the Hall. Having recently re-watched the episode I thought a blog post about the Hall would be interesting as one of the Hall's architectural features could have ended up atop one of London's greatest landmarks . . .

The ground itself where Somerleyton Hall now stands has had some form of homestead on its site since the Viking period. The first country mansion appeared in the Tudor period and was built by the Jernigan family who, being Catholic and fearing persecution in the reign of Elizabeth I emigrated to America. The house then passed through various families but by the middle 1800’s the house was purchased by the Victorian engineer Sir Samuel Morton Peto who spent much of his well-earned money turning Somerleyton into the mansion we see today.

(photo credit: Wikimedia)

Morton Peto had amassed his wealth through his management of the construction firm Grissell and Peto, a company he ran with his cousin, which built some of the most notable British buildings and monuments in London such as Nelson’s Column, the Houses of Parliament and the vast brick sewer system which was a major feat of Victorian engineering by Sir Joseph Bazalgette.

He also submitted a design for the Bell Tower at the top of the Elizabeth Tower (commonly referred to as Big Ben) but it was considered too elaborate and so was rejected. Instead Peto had the design made up at Somerleyton as a clock tower for the mansion and can still be seen by visitors to this day. Whilst this is a beautiful design and it fits in perfectly with Somerleyton I just cannot picture it sitting above the Elizabeth Tower and housing Big Ben, can you? 

(Both Photo's Credited to: Evelyn Simak [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http///creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

The house itself is supposedly very haunted indeed with one room in the attics being so haunted that it was closed and locked for over fifty years - that is until they were offered a large amount of money from Most Haunted to investigate and then apparently they had no problems opening the room up. . . sorry my cynical head is coming out there!

Sadly Peto's career ended with bankruptcy after a couple of investments went wrong and he had to sell Somerleyton to a Yorkshire family, the Crossley's of Halifax (shout out to Yorkshiremen 'done good!). The family still live at Somerleyton today and the house can be visited on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays from April to September. 

This house is definitely going on my 'houses I want to visit' list for when I am next in the area! Have you visited? If so let me know what you think in the comments!

Thanks for reading! 

Yvoire Medieval Village and Chateau

(Photo credit: http://www.yvoire-france.com)

Last weekend I visited Yvoire with Tom. It sits about an hour from Geneva on the south side of Lac Leman and is a small 14th century walled medieval village. I had looked at it before online and my friend Becca had said that it was beautiful so it was high on my list of places to visit. You could take a boat to Yvoire from Nyon which is on the North side of the lake and just half an hours drive from our home, but the boat costs almost 30CHF per person and so it's not really an affordable short cut to driving; also Tom has been saying for a while that he wanted to drive to the other side of the lake and explore there.

So on Sunday lunchtime last week we decided to drive from Nyon along the lake to Geneva, drive through Geneva and then drive along the other side of the lake to Yvoire to explore what was there.

An hour and a half later we pulled into a carpark and got ourselves a ticket. Because Yvoire is a protected medieval village, vehicles are not permitted and so you have to park in the car park and walk to the village. It's only a couple of minutes walk so it wasn't a problem. I did wonder where the money from the carpark went though . . . does it go towards restoration of the village or is it a government carpark? Without further research I don't know but it's an interesting question.

We walked from the car and I was instantly blown away. Even from the outside, this medieval village has a quaint, Lord of the Rings beauty that captures the imagination. The outer walls of the village are made up of houses and buildings so it doesn't look imposing and the moat which originally ran around the outside of the town has been filled in and is now a small road, yet the stone gateway with it's clear markings from a previous portcullis remind you that it must at one time have been a well fortified location.

We walked under the gate way and down what I assume was once the high street. Now, it was a Sunday afternoon so it was very busy with visitors, not something I usually like, so I was keen to find a quiet spot. I fancied a glass of wine so I asked Tom if we could go somewhere for a bite to eat. He replied "I need a cash machine" . . . unsurprisingly there wasn't a 'medieval cash machine' at Yvoire so that brought an end to that plan. By this point it was after 3pm and we were aware of the light fading. I didn't fancy going home in the dark so we decided to walk around and see what the village offered and then we would go home, planning to come back another time.

There was a beautiful Chateau right on the lake and whilst I tried to do some research into who owned it, I struggled. Still sometimes that makes it even better as I can use my imagination instead!

So Yvoire is definitely somewhere we will be returning to, but in the meantime here are some pictures I took of the place so you get an idea what it's like:

(these three photographs are copyright of the author, Charlotte Furness)