Salisbury Club Site, Wiltshire

‘Tis the month of birthdays; three days ago, The Chauffeur’s, and today my older son’s, one year short of forty; how the years fly by. And these days one posts greetings online or tries to make a data call to confirm the same, then moves on. Life is so very busy for everyone, not least retirees who wander about small parts of the globe. I was so glad to catch up with not just today’s Birthday Boy, but also his younger brother who is facing major challenges in his life right now, and if I were a more involved mother, for whom I would fly back across the world to support.  Instead I am one of those mothers who set their sons free when they chose to live adult lives, and while always will be there to pick up the pieces, believe that adult children must be left to work through their own dilemmas. 

So back in the United Kingdom where we continue to pursue our own selfish agenda, the weather forecast for yesterday wasn’t that great, so we hung about hoping for the day to warm up. I hung a load of washing out on our little rotary line and left it to the mercy of the wind and showers. Then we headed off eastwards to Mottisfont, a National Trust property marked with a tiny oak leaf on our map. I had also picked up a brochure in the camp’s information centre but neither of us had any idea that Mottisfont was such a popular tourist spot. According to one of the volunteer guides, it is amongst the top ten most visited National Trust properties and last year had over 360,000 visitors. I think a good few of them were there yesterday. 

Mottisfont started its life as an Augustinian priory, founded in 1201 by William Briwere, a wealthy businessman and courtier. He was one of four noblemen who ran the country when Richard I was away on the crusades, and was given a great deal of land as thanks. The abbey went the way of most such places when Henry VIII’s dissolution came into effect. Interestingly he ruled that the new owners of these buildings had just one year to begin work on them, or he would take the property back. This is the reason that so many of them were demolished; the easiest approach was to knock the building down and rebuild at leisure with recycled stone. 

Lord Sandys, Henry’s Lord Chamberlain and key advisor who had acquired the property, opted instead to remodel the existing buildings, a decision which preserved the main body of the priory church as the spine of his new house. In return for this generous kingly gift, Sandys had to agree to give the King the London villages of Paddington and Chelsea in part exchange.

The house remained in the Sandys family for many years and during that time, twice hosted Elizabeth I . The eighth and final Baron, Edwin, died childless in 1684. His title expired and Mottisfont was left to his nephew, Sir John Mill. The Mill family owned the property for the next two hundred years, the transformation of the house into the basic form it has today was done in 1742. It was Sir Richard Mill who first called his home Mottisfont “Abbey”, referring to its origins.

Ownership stepped sideways through the generations, and it was a distant cousin with a mouthful of a name, Marianne Vaudrey Barker-Mill, who inherited the property in 1884. She let it out to a wealthy banker, his wife and ten children, until personal disaster soured their connection and they abandoned their tenancy. After a few more decades of periodic rental, the house fell into some disrepair before it was sold to Gilbert and Maud Russell in 1934, whose lives are celebrated here in the house today.

It was Maud who brought Mottisfont back to life after they secured the 2,000 acre property as a weekend home. Gilbert was the great grandson of the Duke of Bedford, and became a successful banker after a distinguished career in the army. 


She was the daughter of a seriously rich stockbroker of German Jewish origin, and perhaps she had her own income to supplement her husband’s income, especially after her husband died in the early 1940s, when she continued to entertain celebrities and support many artists, a couple of whom became her lovers, even before poor Gilbert gasped his last breath.

Maud made Mottisfont her country home for the rest of her life, moving over the road to the smaller North End House in 1972 for her final decade. She wanted the estate to be kept together, and so in 1957 decided to gift Mottisfont to the National Trust. Graham Stuart Thomas brought the National Collection of Old Roses to the walled gardens in 1972, and Maud’s friend Derek Hill donated his significant art collection to Mottisfont in 1995, in memory of the happy times he had spent here.

And now there are these thousands of tourists who come to wander about the parklands and explore the house, with special emphasis on the “Whistler Room”, where one can admire the trompe l’oeil murals created by Rex Whistler, who was incidentally no relation of James Whistler. There are two cafes, lovely gardens, exhibitions explaining the story of the house and a spring that produces significant volumes of pure chalk filtered water. Needless to say, we enjoyed our visit immensely.

The weather had not improved particularly but I thought we may as well drive back through a chain of Wiltshire villages along hedged-in roads and pop into Old Sarum, that hill fort visible from our camp.

This ancient Iron Age hilltop and Norman Castle of Old Sarum which dominates the view from our camp and adjacent Hudson’s Field has a rich history being the first settlement in Salisbury dating from approximately 3,000 BC. The hill fort was built around 400 BC and was transformed into a Norman Castle in the 11^th Century with Salisbury’s first even Cathedral being built during the same period. The Cathedral moved to its present site in the 13^th Century and the site slowly fell into disrepair over the next few centuries.

The parkland around the fort is open to the public and free except for a parking fee when the machines are working, but entry to the castle site across the deep moat is administered by English Heritage. We flashed our membership cards and were able to wander about the elevated area, amongst ruined walls and bracing a cold wind. It was interesting indeed, and the views from here over Salisbury and all about are just wonderful, however I may have felt a little short changed had we paid the full entry fee.

Today was set aside for a review of Salisbury itself, having been visited three years ago. We set off on foot down into the city, on a path which followed the banks of the River Avon, where we saw swans, moorhens, ducks and two water voles, a matter of great excitement. Priority was given to securing a map and a haircut for me, both soon achieved.  After sitting over an extended and very full “morning tea” at McDonalds, we wandered about the city streets, visited St Thomas Church marvelling at the open airiness of the building which is unlike most other churches one might come upon. 

In fact St Thomas was built in 1219 for those working on the cathedral and named after Thomas Becket. Most of the current structure dates back to the 15^th century. The feature of this parish church that draws the tourist is the “doom” painting above the chancel arch, painted in 1475, which depicts Christ on the Day of Judgement, sitting astride a rainbow flanked by visions of heaven and hell. (Personally it was Dante’s Inferno that came to mind as I examined this impressive artwork.)

The Doom Painting is apparently the largest of its kind in England and was painted as a thank-offering for a safely returned pilgrim. The painting was white washed over at the Reformation, when such decorative works were considered too “Roman Catholic” for the plainer style of the new church. It was not until the 19^th century that it was rediscovered and restored.

We continued on our way toward the cathedral, following the throngs of school children and busloads of tourists, but decided not to revisit this most impressive and famous icon of Wiltshire. Instead we made do with more distant views and called into a new attraction, or at least “new” for us. 

Arrundells is one of the finest houses in Salisbury’s Cathedral Close. Parts of the house date back to the 13^th century, when it served as a canonry. Much of the external appearance is due to John Wyndham, who lived here between 1718 and 1750. His daughter married the 6^th Lord Arundel of Wardour, a Catholic, and Jesuit priests were often accommodated in the attic. During the 1800s, Arundells housed a girls’ school then a boys’ boarding school, before falling into such ill repair, it was considered for demolition in the mid-1900s. Rescue came by way of Robert and Kate Hawkings who took on the lease in 1964 and restored the house and gardens to a habitable state.

Edward Heath (Conservative Prime Minister from 1970 to 1974) took the lease over in 1985, freeholding the property some years later, and spent the rest of his life here until he expired of pneumonia in 2005. Dying childless, he left the property, the garden and his remarkable collection of art and memorabilia to the public by way of a trust, hence we were able to enjoy the property today and learn a great deal about this very interesting character.

Health’s name has raised its head in the media fairly recently, with hints of casual and ill-considered homosexuality. But whatever the truth about his intimate life, and to his credit and unlike Edward Montagu of Beaulieu who lived a pseudo heterosexual life, he left his mark in political and artistic circles all around the world.

As Prime Minister he oversaw the decimalization of British Coinage, reformed Britain’s system of local government and took Britain into the EEC (European Economic Community), a task that Theresa May is now struggling to reverse.  

Heath came from humble beginnings, was a talented musician, conducting many of the world’s leading orchestras, was an accomplished sailor, winning major international ocean racing trophies and served as an MP for over fifty years.

Much of the artworks and treasures displayed in the house were gifts from leaders as diverse as Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Chairman Mao and Fidel Castro. The artwork is as equally eclectic; works by William Wyllie, John Singer-Sargent, L S Lowry, John Nash, Walter Sickert, Augustus John and Gwen John to name but a few.

The house and its treasures are well curated and the guides or guardians of these treasures are passionate about their task, and would willingly talk about their beloved Edward Heath for days on end if one did not diplomatically extricate oneself.

We did enjoy our visit immensely and it was not until nearly 2 pm that we found a corner in the two acre garden beside the river to eat our lunch; not that we needed it after such a decadent mid-morning feast at the Scottish Restaurant.

From here we made our way across the city south to the suburb of East Harnham, where Chris tried to identify the house he spent a year in with his parents before he emigrated DownUnder. He was no more able to do so than three years ago; the houses are so alike. From there we walked back across the River Avon and the Water Meadows from where one has yet another view of the cathedral, that which inspired one of John Constable’s masterpieces.  

Salisbury’s water meadows are a system of man-made channels and ditches which serve to form an 84 acre inland island circled by the Nadder and Avon rivers. In the winter months they distribute warm water from the chalk downland streams across cold pastureland. This “drowning” provides early grass for grazing sheep and is a remnant of a 17^th century farming practice.

We returned to the centre of the city, and found the cycle and walking path which led us northwards back toward Old Sarum, or more specifically, to our camp in the shadow of the old earth castle.