Blenheim Palace gardens and café.
troupe of dancers wearing tatter-coats and bells on their shins goes jingling through the streets, followed by septuagenarians driving vintage tractors. Later, we start hiking a scenic portion of the Cotswold Way footpath, only to turn back when high winds and rain accost us. Instead, we head to Sudeley Castle, once the home of Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Katherine Parr, where we meander through sculptured gardens with fountains and pay respects inside the lovely chapel where the former queen is buried. At the end of our village days, we return
“home” to our humble cottage to nap, do some laundry or plan the next day’s adventure while sitting on our backyard patio. Then we cook dinner and eat by the fi replace, content in our English country hideaway.
Upstairs, downstairs
We relinquish our rental car in the gargoyle- adorned city of Oxford, where we enjoy a walk- ing tour of the colleges; sip a pint at the Turf Tavern, a fi lm location for PBS’ Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis shows; and tour the Duke Humfrey’s Room in the Bodleian Library, fea- tured in the Harry Potter movies. But we have one more Downton Abbey-related stop: Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston
Churchill. The Oxford bus delivers us to the gates of this World Heritage site, where we walk through acres of gardens and what feels to our feet like miles of richly appointed rooms fi lled with ornate tapestries and golden fl ourishes. Just when our eyes glaze over from excess
grandeur, we take the multimedia “Untold Story” tour, which offers a servants’ perspective on life at Blenheim. The ghost of Grace Ridley, a lady’s maid to the fi rst Duchess of Marlborough, guides us through 300 years of palace history and scandal. Along the way, we learn interest- ing tidbits about the servants who laid fi res, emptied slop pots, prepared banquets, dusted and polished. As on Downton Abbey, there’s a domestic hierarchy: from the well-paid French hairdresser, who created two-foot-high coiffures for her lady in the 1700s, to the lowly boiler boy of the 1800s, who slept by the kitchen door to make sure hot water was ready at any hour. By the end of our southern England excur-
sion, I’m now more understanding of Britain’s culture and class system. Witnessing how aris- tocrats and servants coexisted, harmoniously or not, will stay with me for years—far beyond the life of a TV show.
Inspired by Highclere’s King Tut history, freelance writer Laurel Kallenbach (
laurelkallenbach.com) hopes to fl oat down the Nile exploring Egypt’s antiqui- ties. Read her full article online at EnCompassMag.
EnCompassMag.com EnCompass May/June 2013 41
© Laurel Kallenbach
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