Tag Archives: Stumperies

Arundel Castle and the Collector Earl’s Garden

I’ve been meaning to write about the gardens of Arundel Castle since I visited last summer with friends from  the Birkbeck Garden History Group and discovered the new[ish] Collector Earl’s Garden with [amongst other things]   Oberon’s Palace, a floating … Continue reading

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Ickworth

I was lecturing in  Suffolk recently and took the opportunity to call in at Ickworth, for the first time in many years. What a revelation that was. Not the grand rotunda of the house, splendid on the outside but  rather … Continue reading

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The survival of Wentworth Castle

In 1817 the Rev. Lionel Berguer published “Trifles in Verse”, a collection of  [to put it politely] turgid amateur poetry. The first of these almost unreadable pieces  is dedicated to his friend Frederick Vernon Wentworth. It conjures up a gentle Arcadian … Continue reading

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The ‘smallest clever man I ever knew”….

So said John Ruskin of Edward Cooke who was mentioned in the post of May 2nd about Stumperies. Ruskin—a fellow enthusiast for the natural sciences—went on to say that Cooke was ” full of accurate and valuable knowledge in natural history … Continue reading

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