BIRMINGHAM, England — My, how the mighty have fallen!
In just a day, I’ve thudded down the social ladder from a 1701 mansion commanding the English countryside to a Victorian tenement squeezed into one of Britain’s grittiest industrial cities. It’s a lesson in humility courtesy of the National Trust of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
It’s easy to time-slot yourself back in British history.
With the wide range of properties the National Trust has helped preserve, one visit you may fancy yourself Nancy, Lady Astor, and book into the New Cottage at her majestic Cliveden in Buckinghamshire. Another time you may heed your personal call of the wild and move into the Souter Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage on the rugged coast between the rivers Tyne and Wear.
This trip, I decided to create my own Upstairs, Downstairs fantasy, pretending I owned stately Hanbury Hall in Droitwich in Worcestershire, then settling for a roof over my head at Birmingham’s Back to Back Houses.
In reality, both were among the Trust’s least-expensive heritage stays.
At Hanbury Hall, about 25 minutes’ drive west of Birmingham, I was rubbing shoulders with the spirit of Thomas Vernon. A Whig member of Parliament from 1715 to 1721, the London barrister was powerful enough to help bring King William and Queen Mary from Holland and topple James II from his throne.
And what type of house does such a man build? A William-and-Mary-style red brick mansion bristling with opulence to dazzle his guests. He even hired SirJames Thornhill to paint classical murals up his staircase: the man famous for his work on the dome of London’s St. Paul Cathedral.
I get a sense of the man when I walk through his Snobs Tunnel, built so no one could see the servants going from the kitchen to the walled garden.
Of course, my National Trust rooms are up a steep staircase to the third floor, so I’m decidedly in servant land myself. But I love the cozy attic rooms of dark, chiseled beams and my eagle’s view of Vernon’s meticulous garden. I can make myself a cup of tea and survey the grounds, then pop downstairs after hours and pretend the entire 400 acres, from ice house and orangery to mushroom shed, are mine.
I’d better breathe in the musky tang of boxwood and the spice of marigolds at Hanbury Hall, because Birmingham’s Back to Back Court is going to offer me nothing but coal smoke and poverty.
These hastily built workers’ cottages popped up like mushrooms as the village of Birmingham grew into England’s second-largest city. It may have been the Industrial Revolution, but it was simply revolting if you lived in the Back to Backs.
The tenements take their name from a distinct construction: a three-floor building, one room per floor. Plastered to the back of this streetside house is its identical twin, facing into a courtyard that held the communal wash house and ash-pit outhouses.
I shouldn’t complain; my sweet little No. 52, set in the 1870s, faces Inge Street, a nicety that workers paid extra for so they didn’t have to admit they were in a back-facing house.
Birmingham had tens of thousands of these buildings, but now only four remain. National Trust docents lead tours of the houses, built between 1802 and 1830. They use city censuses to tell family stories from the Levys in the 1840s to 1966, when the Meakins moved out and the buildings were condemned for human habitation.
What saved these four are the street-front businessesthat lasted until 2001, especially tailor George Saunders who left behind suits on their dress dummies, run through with basting stitches.
Whether you’re staying in a mansion or a tenement, the West Midlands is a great touring base for some of England’s legendary castles, houses and gardens.
ASTON HALL
Birmingham has one of the country’s great Jacobean mansions, Aston Hall. Sir Thomas Holte devoted 17 years to its construction, finally showing off its magnificently plastered ceilings and friezes in 1635.
Soon, he was embroiled in the Civil War, with a cannon ball crashing through his staircase and King Charles I coming to stay the night before a battle. Holte reluctantly sided with the king, a decision that cost him dearly in fines when Charles was executed. But at least he kept his head and his family survived to regain its fortune and live in Aston Hall for nearly 200 years.
Outdoors, curators have just re-created Lady Holte’s garden from about 1740, part of a $20 million restoration of house and grounds. The garden is a contemporary version of traditional European and Persian forms, with a low, stylized fountain gurgling through its center.
WARWICK CASTLE
Warwick Castle is a daylong theme park of an English castle, run by the company that operates the London Eye. Its strategic role and first fortification go back to Norman times, but most of the buildings that remain aremedieval.
Archers shoot their longbows on the lawn, and princesses beckon kids into the Maidens Tower and Pageant Playground. Inside, wax figures from Madame Tussauds create the “Kingmaker” exhibit, set in 1471 when castle owner Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and his townspeople prepared for war. These are some of the oldest rooms of the castle, and in the cellar below the fireplace, guide Gordon Sharp points out, “Richard III disposed of a few people.”
Upstairs in the state rooms, it seems that Queen Elizabeth II herself is inviting you to dinner. She and the Duke of Edinburgh did dine in the state dining room in 1998, a century after Frances, Countess of Warwick, hosted a royal weekend party that’s immortalized in wax tableaux. The castle is still, as Sir Walter Scott portrayed it,“the fairest monument of ancient and chivalrous splendor which yet remains uninjured by time.” COVENTRY
What is the opposite of “uninjured by time”? The Germans, who bombed Coventry to near-oblivion in 1940, have even coined a verb from their destruction: to coventrate something to pieces.
Rebuilt Coventry and the new cathedral, completed in 1962, stand as monuments to peace and reconciliation, with the new cathedral appended to its shattered predecessor, St. Michael’s Cathedral. Inside, a 70-foot-high tapestry portrays Christ in Glory, and outside, a powerful sculpture on the sandstone wall depicts St. Michael Defeating the Devil.
KENILWORTH CASTLE
Like Aston Hall, there’s another historic garden in its first year at Kenilworth Castle, the seat of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Queen Elizabeth I’s court favorite. The castle was destroyed by Oliver Cromwell’s troops in the Civil War, but now curators have reconstructed the Queen’s Privy Garden, the first authentic Elizabethan garden in England.
Leicester built the garden, along with a new wing of his castle, for Elizabeth’s visit July 9-27, 1575. It would be her fourth and final visit to Kenilworth, and Leicester’slast chance to persuade the Queen to marry him.
The garden was planned as a private bower, “a delight to all senses.” The strawberries, wild roses and cherry trees were chosen for their erotic connotations. Leicester also built an aviary with more than 200 birds for his lady.
And how do we know this today? Someone in the queen’s retinue sneaked into the garden, measured the plantings and wrote it all in a letter that still survives.
“This is an erotic garden,” said Blue Badge guide Roger Bailey. “After all, he was trying to grab the hand of Elizabeth.” The ploy didn’t work, but centuries later we have his floral love letter to admire.
The National Trust offers more than 360 cottages in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, from a former water tower to a coast guard station - even the 1820 Stembridge Tower Mill, England’s last remaining thatched windmill. www.nationaltrustcot tages.co.uk.
The Royal Oak Foundation is the U.S. membership affiliate of the National Trust, established in 1895 and now one of Europe’s largest conservation charities. The $55 annual Royal Oak membership earns discounted rates in National Trust holiday cottages and free admission to more than 350 National Trust properties. (212) 480-2889; royal-oak. org.
Prices range from my humble Back to Backs, the least expensive in the collection with a winter rate of $395 per week, including VAT, to the recently opened Apartment at Greenway, upstairs in the holiday home of mystery writer Agatha Christie, which peaks at $4,509 per week in early September. Christie described Greenway as “the loveliest place in the world,” and the apartment is set to her refurbishment in 1938. The National Trust says, “We guarantee guests a thrilling time but will charge extra for murders!”
Love history but self-catering cottages aren’t your style? The National Trust recently acquired three grand estates, all more than 300 years old, which are luxury hotels: Hartwell House in Aylesbury, Bodysgallen Hall near Llandudno, Wales, and Middlethorpe Hall in York. In the United States, contact by fax at (800) 260-8338; historichousehotels.com
Travel, Pages 54 on 01/03/2010