Captain's Log 

The First Floor

I visited the Chapel first. Not because I wanted to unburden my woes to a divine presence, but to see the remnants of the Bowstones Anglo-Saxon cross. I thought there was a sermon taking place when I walked through the Chapel’s door, but it turned out to be a talk about the history of the House.  The two pieces of the Bowtones cross were tucked away at the back of the Chapel and so I was able to take some photos without disturbing anybody. Their engravings were much more prominent than those I’d found on my previous walk in the area (see A Bit Of Sponds With Lyme). 

I walked up some stone steps and tailgated some other visitors through the front door. This turned out to be a good tactic since the NT Greeter pounced on them first and left me alone to admire the surprisingly cosy large hall. Tapestries and paintings hung from the walls and there was a grand piano to fill up the space. Like a piece in Cluedo, I then entered the library. There were far fewer books than I’d found at NT Nostell Priory, but they were all of a similar obscure subject matter. I couldn't really visually any of the Legh’s picking up one of these mighty  tomes and reading it from cover to cover.    

The First Floor

The dining area was quite large and had its fair share of oil painting portraits hung from the walls. The room was quite light and felt a bit more minimalist than other dining rooms that I’d come across on my travels. In a small side room off the dining room, three women were sitting down staring at a TV that was showing a program about the craft of tapestry. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a spare chair for me to sit down and watch too. and I didn’t want to disturb them, and so I moved on to the Drawing Room. This room had an impressive stained glass window, although it also had the side effect of making the room a little dark. I went through some bedrooms and then joined a corridor. This ran around the internal courtyard which I could see below me through the windows.     

I wandered into a room that had been dedicated to Sir Francis Legh’s clock collection. He evidently had a passion for horology since there were many clocks, some of them as early as 17th century. His day job was equerry to HM Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, presumably because  he was good with horses and had a respected reputation for turning up on time. He eventually became Treasurer to Princess Margaret which must have been a useful engagement for additions to his collection of cigarette cards.     

An elderly NT Greeter informed me that a talk was just about to take place in her room about the history of Regency chairs and that I should take a seat if I wanted to listen to it. I glanced into the room and noted that all of the seats were vacant. I felt sorry for her, but I wasn’t really sure how stimulated I would be by  Regency chairs. I declined and said that I was short of time. I couldn’t look her in the eyes when I said this and so I don’t know if she was disappointed, although I suspect she was.

The Staircase

There was a moose’s head nailed up on the wall at the bottom of the stairwell. Basil Fawlty would have loved it. The staircase turned out to be an interesting engineering structure. It was a cantilever design with the support coming from the exterior walls. I wondered why Giacomo Leoni, the 18th century designer, would have chosen this option rather than a simple support approach. I suppose it did open up the area beneath the stairs, but not significantly enough that it was an architectural feature. Dry rot was discovered in the stairs during restoration work and now steel beams do the grunt work.  

I followed an elderly couple up a step of steps. I was two or three steps behind the woman and was astonished when she suddenly farted. The blast singed my eyebrows and blew back the peak of my baseball cap so that it now pointed to the ceiling. It was so loud that it made the nearby sash windows rattle. I thought she might turn around and apologise, but she continued to ascend the staircase as if nothing had happened, and then they both disappeared into a room.  I looked behind me and was thankful that nobody else had been following me up the stairs; that could have been very embarrassing. 

The Long Gallery

The Long Gallery did exactly what it says on the tin. It was a long room that ran along the east side of the house. There was a billiard table at the south end, but two fellows had already commandeered it. One of the chaps was telling the other an anecdote about Dennis Taylor and I wasn’t sure whether the story was based on the table here or some other place. I wandered down to the NT Greeters who were lurking at the north end of the room. One of them was elderly and the other was younger and had the look of somebody who was being trained up for the job. I decided to test out their credentials and asked about the curious heraldry I’d seen on the plasterwork of the ceiling of this room and also above that of the cantilever staircase. This consisted of a severed arm holding a standard with a St George’s flag attached, surrounded by 8 stars.
‘Do you know the story behind the severed arm and the flag?’ I asked the elderly NT Greeter. She smiled, clicked her fingers and then reeled off the story about the severed arm at the Battle of Crecy that I documented at the start of this Captain’s Log.
‘Thank you’ I said. The elderly Greeter looked smugly at her young apprentice with a look that said, ‘listen and learn.’
‘Do you know what the 8 stars represent?’ I added. The elderly Greeter looked shocked and shuffled nervously on her feet.
‘I’m afraid I don't,’ she replied sheepishly.
‘Hmmm…I think I’ll have to report this to your supervisor’ I responded. Yes, I did actually say that. It made the trainee look a bit happier. Later research revealed that the 8 stars on the St George’s Cross represent the Southern Cross constellation, a prominent star formation in the Southern Hemisphere. The design is specifically associated with the flag of New South Wales in Australia. The stars on the St George’s Cross signifies a connection to the Southern Hemisphere, and in this case, New South Wales. Given that Captain Cook didn’t land in Australia until 1770 , over 400 years after the Battle of Crecy, there seems to be a time discrepancy in this heraldry. Not only that, why would you want a picture of a severed arm on your ceiling…even if it was a French one.   

A staircase dropped me back down to the courtyard. That was the House complete, and so now for the garden.

The Garden

I have to say that the Garden at Lyme was one of the best that I’ve pottered around. It was probably as much to do with the location as it was to do with the flowers and vegetation. The spectacular south face of the house was never far away, separated from the lake by a wonderful lawn. I wandered along the lakeside path and admired that classic view of the house across the water. The trails through the Garden were well surfaced and the flower beds professionally maintained. The Garden didn't cover a massive area, but it was large enough to hold a large variety of plants and trees. There was also an Orangery which I had a wander around. Some people were walking around the garden in period costume and I wasn’t really sure whether these were NT Greeters who had got a bit carried away, or some other event. The last place I visited was the wonderful, square Italian garden. It was positioned below a large retaining wall at the west side of the house. 

My tour of Lyme House and Garden was now complete. It was an impressive place and was well worth a visit. Internally, it had the normal manor house ‘gloom’, but it did seem a bit lighter and more cheerful than similar houses that I’d visited. The information boards and Greeters were up to the usual National Trust’s high standards (apart from that one Greeter not knowing what the ‘8 stars’ were on the heraldry - although she'll probably be sacked once the National Trust management read my feedback form). I just hope that after the experience of the  flatulent lady passing wind on the cantilever staircase, the local turbulence has not further damaged it such that more structural repairs are required.