Ducks and bread

We had a super day out at East Riddlesden Hall, my local National Trust property (despite twice getting drenched in sudden heavy rain showers. The kids thought that was fun!)

They have some thoughtful activities to keep children amused over the summer holidays. Of course, the ducks are always there and they sell proper duck food in the shop, so you needn't worry about giving them unsuitable fare. My granddaughters were brave enough to hold seed on their hands and the ducks all came running to peck at it. Such a quacking and jostling going on! It was really very funny to watch.

The girls then had a happy time inside, hunting round the house for tiny wooden mice that were hidden in each room. When they had found and counted them all, they got a sticker. In the gardens, there were wooden bees hanging from the trees, each having an interesting fact about bees. The girls had to memorise at least one fact and, when they quoted them on the way out, they were given miniature pots of bee-friendly wild flower seeds to take home, adorned with a tiny bee. They were both rather thrilled with that.

Even better was the activity in the barn, where they were shown how to mix yeast, flour and water to make bread. Much kneading and shaping went on. When the dough was prepared, it went into a plastic bag to take home to bake. By the time we'd played in the adventure playground for a while, then had coffee and cake and were ready to go home, the dough (stored in the car boot) had already doubled in size. They later made pizza with the dough... and they had a great time making it.

All the staff/volunteers at the Hall were kindness itself and took pains to chat with the children and make them welcome. It was a truly delightful experience. Well done, National Trust East Riddlesden.

(And yes, my granddaughter does have pink hair! Temporarily anyway. A summer holiday treat.)

A sense of ownership

After my walk round Low Wood, I popped in to visit my local National Trust property, East Riddlesden Hall, a 17th century manor house. It's a smallish property by NT standards, but nonetheless very pleasant to wander round. I love the sense of ownership I experience since I joined the National Trust. I just flash my card at the door and feel like I live there!

I didn't go in the house this time as I wanted to see how the gardens are coming along in the spring sunshine. They have large herb gardens and hold workshops in the use of herbal plants in the home, in cooking, medicine and for making dyes. The plant below is Angelica, just coming into bloom. It is not commonly seen these days. Its root is used for flavouring gin and vermouth.

Inspired by...

There are two huge old barns in the grounds of East Riddlesden Hall, dating back 400 years to when it was a thriving farm estate. The Airedale Barn has been cleaned up and weatherproofed and is used for weddings and exhibitions. When I visited, there was a display of work by Barbara Greene, National Trust artist in residence. She has been inspired by fragments of china, glass, bone, fabric and nails found during the renovation of her 17th century farmhouse up the valley in Cononley. She has created small sculptures, artist books, boxes and textiles, displayed as a 'cabinet of curiosities' and tracing the connection between the objects and the lives of people who have lived and worked in the Aire valley. The exhibit shown was called 'Fibonacci sunflower' and I thought it was rather pleasing. 

The other barn, the Great Barn, remains in its rough state: dark and somewhat mysterious, despite the four sets of huge barn doors. I love just standing inside, allowing my eyes to accustom to the dark and then noticing the stone flags of the threshing floor, the old farm carts and the implements stored inside. Above it all, my gaze is always drawn to the massive oak beams, with their matching marks used when it was being put together (like a 400 year old 'flat pack'). The barn would have been used to thresh and store grain, as well as sheltering animals. It always feels very peaceful to me. I think it resonates with my links to the farmers and labourers that abound in the paternal line of my family tree. 

NT East Riddlesden

Although it's quite expensive, I've decided to renew my National Trust membership for another year. It's often costly to get into NT properties anyway, so if I visit a few (like I did last year) I will get the most out of it. I've decided I like the feeling of 'ownership' that you get from being a member and contributor. It's good to be helping to care for the lovely places. It also means I can pop along to my nearest NT property, East Riddlesden Hall, anytime I like. It's quite a small property, a 17th century manor house - but 'perfectly formed', as they say. (Click the label at the bottom of this post to see more info and photos taken on other visits I've made here).

Despite the warm weather, the gardens are looking a bit bare as yet, though there were snowdrops and crocuses in the woodland garden.

The house sits on a ridge above the flood plain of the River Aire (which runs through the trees on the right) and there's a good view of the valley from the side garden. The property's estate includes the field lower down and there's a nature trail to explore beside the river.

Dark Ages and daffodils

East Riddlesden Hall is the nearest National Trust place to me, so I can now take advantage of my membership and pop along there anytime. It is only small but it's pleasant: an interesting old manor house and ancient tithe barns, with a large pond in front and small but attractive gardens. It was another dull day, but the daffodils were in bloom in wide sweeps across the lawns. In the gardens at the rear there were few flowers blooming as yet, though the blue ones, which I think are Siberian squill, made bright drifts in the flower beds.

There was an event advertised: an Anglo-Saxon Experience Day. It was mainly aimed at children and there were some families in a side room, busily creating round shields. I had expected a few more costumed actors but there were only two or three, from a group called the English Companions. It was, however, interesting to read in their displays a bit about The Dark Ages, that period in British history between about 450 and 1066, after the Romans withdrew and before the Norman Conquest. Germanic tribes migrated from Europe and settled, and the Anglo-Saxon period effectively saw the birth of the English nation, English language and culture. Christianity was established and systems of government grew as various kingdoms (Mercia, Wessex and so on) developed. It was a complicated and turbulent time but it laid many foundations that still influence life in Britain today. The earliest archeological traces found at East Riddlesden Hall date back to 973 though the house we see now originated in the 1600s.

I'm always grateful for the volunteers and historians that seek to bring these times to life. I studied history at school but remember it as a fairly dry subject. It is only in recent years that I have really started to be aware of the evidence of the past all around us and to be interested, particularly in social history.

East Riddlesden Hall

A friend and I had a wander along the canal path and ended up visiting the National Trust property, East Riddlesden Hall, a 17th century manor house. I've always liked it. It is small enough to feel cosy and to get a feel for how a relatively ordinary, though well-to-do, merchant family lived in the past. The Murgatroyds were staunch Royalists and there are Royalist symbols in the stonework on and in the house. It has been altered many times over the years and all that is left of one wing is just the front wall punctuated by windows. The small gardens are attractive too, with a large duckpond at the front and beds of unusual herbs that were grown for culinary and medicinal use and to make dye. The hall is reputed to be haunted but it always feels a warm and friendly place to me.

A local beauty spot

This year's unpredictable weather has meant I haven't done many whole day 'expeditions'. Indeed, I seem to have spent a good few weekends stuck in the house while the rain beats down. (Some tidy cupboards to show for it... so it's not all bad!) Any outings I've done tend to have been short and local.  
One such trip was to the local National Trust property, East Riddlesden Hall.  It has just won a Gold Award for "The Best Small Visitor Attraction in England". (Mind you, I imagine large visitors would find it attractive too!)  It's a 17th century manor house, with pretty gardens and a scenic lake.  On the day I visited there was a wedding taking place in the ancient barn, which is apparently now licensed for the ceremony itself as well as the reception.  A wedding car was parked outside the house - a vintage Jaguar, I think.  With this as the back-drop, I'm sure the happy couple will have some wedding photos to be proud of.
To read more about the history of East Riddlesden Hall, please look back to the series of three photos I posted in July 2010  - here, here and here - or click the East Riddlesden Hall label below.

Walled gardens

The walled gardens at East Riddlesden Hall are a most attractive feature, designed by Graham Stuart Thomas for the National Trust. There are borders of herbs that would have been routinely used in the past in cooking, as healing remedies and to scent rooms and clothing. There are formal flowerbeds, lawns, fruit trees and a 'wild' garden too. And of course the large fishpond at the entrance (see my photo two days ago) that may have been made originally by monks from Bolton Abbey. A slightly later addition to the house - the Starkie Wing - was demolished in 1905, with one wall left standing (to the left of my picture) that has been attractively incorporated into the garden.

For a photo of this wing from the other side, please see my blog for September 30 2009.

The Hall, East Riddlesden

East Riddlesden Hall is a manor house, built in the 1640s, by James Murgatroyd, a wealthy yeoman clothier from Halifax. It was built on the site of an older hall but little of that remains. James Murgatroyd and his family were staunch Royalists, during the English Civil War (1642-1651) when it was unwise to advertise that allegiance. That did not stop him having the heads of King Charles I and his Queen carved in stone in the Hall, with the legend 'Vive le Roy' (Long live the King.) Many Royalists were forced to forfeit their land. That didn't happen to the Murgatroyds but their property in Halifax was attacked and captured by the Parliamentarians. The family must have escaped or been released and by 1648 East Riddlesden Hall was completed. The surrounding land was farmed and for many years the house was let to tenant farmers, which meant it has stayed substantially unchanged.

With its oak panelled rooms and mullioned windows, the house has quite a cosy, 'lived-in' feel inside (though reputed to have ghosts!) and is now furnished with Yorkshire oak furniture of the 17th & 18th centuries. The Yorkshire rose window that you can see is typical of grand houses in this area, the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Green oasis

I am trying to raise some motivation to do some decorating at home, and as part of 'thinking myself into the mood' I set off last Saturday on a mission to gather some paint sample cards. It so happens that the nearest 'Sainsbury's Homebase' DIY store is not all that far from East Riddlesden Hall, our local National Trust property. So it occurred to me that it would be pleasant to pop in there as part of the trip.

I had rather underestimated the walking distance between the two places (1.5 km) and, as it was an extremely hot and humid day, it was with some relief that I turned into the gates. You are greeted by this wonderful green panorama, so refreshing on a hot day. (In fact, as I arrived, there was a wedding group having photos taken in just this spot. One of the great oak barns is hired out for weddings. But I was too hot to bother snapping them - and anyway I'm not as bold as some of you bloggers when it comes to photographing strangers.)

First stop for me was the delightful café for a long, cool drink and a piece of the delicious "Riddlesden Slice" - a moist cake made from rice flour, carrots, nuts and all manner of other lovely healthy things.

Oak-framed Barn

East Riddlesden Hall also boasts this magnificent oak-framed barn, which is thought to be a medieval tithe barn used for storing the tithes - the tenth of a farm's produce that had to be given to the church. It's a hugely impressive structure, long and high, just like the nave of a church, with the only light coming through a few slits in the walls and through the enormous arched doors. I think there's something very beautiful about old wooden-framed buildings, how they are worked with such respect for the timbers. I don't think they used glue, screws or nails, just wooden pegs to secure the frame. The barn is now used to display some old carts and agricultural implements.

East Riddlesden Hall

This 17th century manor house is the nearest National Trust property to Saltaire. (The National Trust is a large UK charity which buys, restores and maintains historic old properties and areas of beautiful countryside and coast). East Riddlesden Hall was built in the 1600s, on the site of an older medieval dwelling, by a merchant and clothier, James Murgatroyd, and is furnished inside as it would have been in the 1600s. The part that you see in the picture is a later wing, built in 1692 by Edmund Starkie, James Murgatroyd's great-grandson, which was demolished in 1905, leaving only one wall standing. The Hall is supposed to be haunted by several ghosts, including the Grey Lady. Her husband is said to have discovered her with her lover, so he then punished her by starving her to death.

It does have quite a sombre air about it, because the stonework of the whole building has been blackened by pollution. Local mills and factories, and the coal-fires of houses, meant that urban areas of Britain were very smoky and polluted for 150 years from the start of the Industrial Revolution until laws were passed in the 1960s to control emissions. Even as a child I can remember 'smog' - a terrible black fog that came down sometimes, full of smoke and grit, so thick you couldn't see more than a few feet in front of you. Some of the buildings in Saltaire village are still black, though others have had the stonework cleaned.

Aire valley view

Another photo taken on my walk on Saturday, 5 or 6 miles up the valley from Saltaire. This is looking across the valley of the River Aire, more or less south-east. It looks so peaceful with the sheep grazing - and in many ways it is, but it's surprisingly close to urban development (residential and light industrial) and somewhere in the picture, though unseen, is a fast, wide A-road along the valley, and the railway line too.

The picture is taken in the grounds of East Riddlesden Hall, a 17th century manor house that is now in the care of the National Trust. I called in there with one thing in mind and that was to sample the very good tea-room! I wasn't disappointed. They make extremely good home-made soup with lovely bread - and tasty cakes too. Just the thing when you're doing a long walk.