Europe's Grandmother: the Death of Queen Victoria by Catherine Hokin

 Victoria, Albert & their 9 children

It's hard to write anything at the moment without the current political turmoils shouting to be heard. I'm deep in WWII and the parallels are strong enough to be frightening. I thought it would be worthwhile therefore, on the anniversary of Queen Victoria's death (22nd January 1901) to remind ourselves how closely entwined the UK once was with her continental neighbours, through the network of marriages entered into by the Queen and Prince Albert's nine children.

In the last decades of her life, Victoria earned the nickname 'The Grandmother of Europe' and on her death The Economist referred to her crown as "a golden link." That's hardly surprising when you run through the list of the matches she made and the offspring they produced. Take a breath and here they are.

 Victoria walks Princess Beatrice down the aisle

Victoria, the Princess Royal, became Empress of Germany and Queen of Prussia, and went on to be mother to Kaiser Wilhelm II who led Germany in WWI, and Queen Sophie of Greece. Edward VII married Princess Alexandra of Denmark and their daughter Maud became Queen of Norway. Princess Alice became Grand Duchess of Hesse and her daughter became the ill-fated Empress Alexandra of Russia. Prince Alfred married Grand Duchess Maria Alexandra of Russia and one of their daughters, Marie, became Queen of Romania. Princess Helena married into a German house (Shleswig-Holstein) as did Prince Leopold (Waldeck and Pyrmont). Prince Arthur married Princess Louise of Prussia, one of their daughters becoming Crown Princess of Sweden and Princess Beatrice married Henry of Battenberg, their daughter Victoria Eugenie then becoming Queen of Spain. Only the commonly-branded "unconventional" Princess Louise bucked the trend, marrying the Duke of Argyll and remaining childless. It's an exhausting list and tracing the multiple strands that run on from it through Europe has to be the work of many spreadsheets.

 Victoria with some of her children & grandchildren

Many of the family ties were shattered by World War One and its redrawing of Europe's political structures. Nevertheless, it is likely that all the current royal families of Europe, either in place or aspiring, can claim Victoria as their common ancestor. That includes: Sophia, wife of Juan Carlos of Spain who abdicated in 2014; Haakon Magnus, the Crown Prince of Norway and Carl XVI of Sweden. Her reach continues to be a long one, as was the hemophilia which Victoria and many of her female descendants carried.

The obituaries and funeral reports of the time frequently allude to apprehension over the future, which is hardly surprising at the end of such a long reign.

 Funeral cortege, 4 Feb 1901, Manchester Guardian

The Economist notes that "it is not a reign but an era which closes with her death." The Manchester Guardian talks quite lyrically about the silence that marked the cortege's passing in a way that seems to echo that apprehension: "It was a silent crowd; indeed its supreme characteristics were its blackness and silence. People were silent because they wished to be silent, because the magnetism of the hour was upon them, and its solemnity. Shutting one's eyes, it was the seashore that seemed to sound – not the busy city with its clamorous voices and roarings. Over London there hung the light mist of our winter mornings, and the sun shone like a dim, far-off lighthouse, with its intervals of eclipse. When the dead Queen's body was borne past, the silence simply deepened – that was all."

Silence seems to be something we are sorely lacking at the moment, every political moment is dominated by noise. Don't get me wrong, I'm no monarchist and have no desire to return to out-moded and, in the case of Empire, repugnant political systems. My thoughts here are simply about connections: trace back any of our tangled ancestral DNA and we're all a mix of more countries and customs than most of us know beyond a generation or two. The Economist obituary concludes its section on the strengths and weaknesses of the Queen with: "The hearts of the people are full of grief ... but there is no solid reason for political fear." On the anniversary of the death of that particular link across Europe, I wonder how many of us can feel the same.

Neo-Classical Revivalism by Elisabeth Storrs

Castellani Medusa Cameo and Micromosaic Egyptian Necklace

I’m not the only one who admires the exquisite jewellery of the Etruscans (see my earlier post on Ancient World Glitter and Glamour). In the mid-19th and early 20th centuries jewellers and artisans were inspired by archaeological fashions. The most influential of these was a Roman goldsmith, Fortunato Pio Castellani, and his sons, Alessandro and Augusto, who rose to eminence through their introduction of the neo-Classical revivalist styles. For three generations the Castellani family, with the crossed ‘C’s as their hallmark, were at the centre of the archaeological revival movement, which saw jewellery created in the styles of the ancient Etruscans, Romans, Egyptians, Byzantine and Greeks of the 9th to 4th centuries BCE. Castellani based many of his designs directly on archaeological evidence and often incorporated intaglios, cameos and micromosaics into his jewellery.

Castellani C19th/original C5th BCE millegrain pendants

Castellani Jewellery
In 1860, Castellani was enlisted to be an advisor on the excavation of the Regolini-Galassi tomb at modern day Cerveteri. This site is renowned as one of the great treasure troves of Etruscan art. Castellani became fascinated by the brooches, earrings and necklaces found in the tomb which were studded with minuscule gold spheres, often smaller than a pin head. This ‘granulation’ technique was achieved without soldering and created an effect called ‘millegrain’ or ‘thousand grains.’ Knowledge of the craft of granulation was believed lost but Castellani discovered there were goldsmiths in the mountain villages near Rome who had preserved not only the secret of granulation but also another procedure called ‘fillegrain or ‘thread and grain/filigree’ where motifs were applied using thin gold wire.

Castellani gold necklaces, amber & gold parure set, gold millegrain brooch

The Castellanis owned a shop near the Trevi Fountain in Rome where they assembled a magnificent collection of antiquities in their showroom. Visitors could then buy replicas as a souvenir of their visit. Not so very different from the ‘museum’ shops that await you when you try to exit from any art gallery or museum exhibition today!

Emperor Napoleon III of France was a great lover of Etruscan artefacts, too. He bought the famous art collection of an Italian marquis, Giovanni Campana, which he exhibited in the Louvre. The Castallani family were commissioned to catalogue and restore the jewellery of the Campana Collection which enabled them to study ancient techniques and gain access to an enormous number of designs. By 1860 neo-Etruscan style pieces had become contemporary fashion accessories and remained in demand until the end of the century. At this point complete ‘parure’ sets of jewels appeared usually consisting of a brooch, necklace and matching earrings. In fact, a few years ago I attended a Titanic exhibition and was amazed to see neo-Etruscan jewellery on display which indicates the ‘fad’ was still in existence in the early C20th. Indeed, it was only when diamond jewellery became increasingly fashionable that the allure of the finely wrought gold pieces faded in contrast to the attraction of sparkling gemstones.

Wedgwood Ceramics
Englishman Josiah Wedgwood was another artisan who was inspired by Classical artwork. His interest was sparked by discovering the various volumes in the Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman antiquities from the cabinet of the Honble. Wm. Hamilton, His Britannick Maiesty's envoy extraordinary at the Court of Naples.

Wedgwood black basalte urn/Etruscan bucchero jug

Sir William Hamilton was the British Ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples in 1764-1800 (His second wife was the notorious Emma Hamilton, mistress of Admiral Horatio Nelson!) Hamilton’s collection of vases and other antiquities were described as ‘Etruscan’ but in fact many of the items described as such were actually Greek. However, this does not detract from Josiah Wedgwood’s love affair with Etruscan ceramics. He established a factory named ‘Etruria’ in 1769 in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, which operated for 180 years.

The motto of the factory was ‘Artes Etruriae Renascuntur’ ie ‘The Arts of Etruria are reborn’. His most authentically Etruscan design was his ‘black basaltes’ which were black, burnished and unglazed ceramics similar to original Bucchero ware (see Black on Red, Red on Black: Figure it Out) Made from reddish-brown clay which burned black in firing, black basalte owed its richer colour to the addition of manganese.

Hamilton also inspired Wedgwood’s more famous ‘Jasperware’. When the ambassador returned to England in 1783–84, he brought a Roman glass vase (known as the Portland Vase as he sold it to the Duchess of Portland ) which was given to the British Museum. The relief decorations on the vase served as inspiration for Wedgwood’s unglazed matte ‘biscuit’ Jasper stoneware produced in a number of different hues such as green, yellow, lilac, and black. The best known colour is the pale blue known as ‘Wedgwood Blue’. Decorations in contrasting colours (typically in white) give a cameo effect to the ceramic. The cameos were initially in the Neo-Classical style but, over the centuries, were adapted to more modern subjects including silhouette portraits of notable people.

Wedgwood copy/Roman Portland Vase

Josiah Wedgwood’s copy of the Portland Vase proved to be more valuable than its price. In 1845, a vandal called William Lloyd shattered the original vase into 200 pieces. The British Museum’s restorer was able to reassemble the classical vase by referring to Wedgwood’s own masterpiece.

Antique Wedgwood ceramics are sought after in auctions houses around the world, but it is Castellani’s craftsmanship which provides the best example of the value placed on neo-classical revivalism. A set of gold tasselled earrings (depicting the god Apollo riding his horses upon a crescent held aloft by two angels) was the subject of a bidding war in 2013. Estimated at $6000, it eventually sold for $169,000! However, no matter whether it is an original or replicated piece, I always wonder about the women who wore cherished pieces of jewellery be they ancient Etruscan princesses laid to rest in tombs or an ill-fated passenger who ended her life beneath icy waters.

 

Castellani earrings/Wedgwood Blue Jasperware

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome series. Her latest release, is Fables & Lies: A World War II Novel about stolen Trojan treasure and the Aryan Myth. She is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia and the ARA Historical Novel Prize. Learn more at www.elisabethstorrs.com. 

More Neo-Classical Revivalist jewellery can be found on her Pinterest board. Images are courtesy of the MET project and Wikimedia Commons.

Warnford: a village of two halves? by Carolyn Hughes

After last month’s excursion into the topic of language in historical fiction, today I am continuing my series of blogs about the history of the Meon Valley in Hampshire.

I have mentioned the little village of Warnford in previous posts, in particular my post, Lost worlds, changed lives: life beyond the Black Death. Discussing how the shape of the countryside changed in the centuries following the Black Death, I referred to the creation of parks on great estates – “emparking” – and showed how some estate owners, seeing a great country house and a fashionable park to set it in as a visible expression of their wealth, were more than willing to evict their tenants to realise their ambitions. Although some owners simply evicted their tenants and expected them to fend for themselves, others built their tenants a new village outside the estate. And Warnford is an example of a village where it is thought that the existing settlement was moved to a new site, to enable the creation of the landscaped park, though exactly when it happened isn’t clear. The still standing church and the ruins of the medieval manor house are evidence of the location of the original village.

I was interested to explore Warnford a little further, and in particular some of its buildings...

The parish of Warnford lies between West Meon and Exton, mainly along the main south-north road (the A32), which follows the line of the River Meon, though outlying areas of the parish climb up to the downs. Warnford Park lies to the east of the road and has the river running through it, whilst the village pub, the 17th century George and Falcon, and the majority of the village’s houses lie on the north and west side of the road.

The parish is now very small, with a population of around 220, but is well-known for its extensive watercress beds, which are fed from the waters of the River Meon. At the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, Warnford was relatively large. It consisted of two manors, both held from St Peter’s Abbey (Winchester) by Hugh de Port, an Anglo-French Norman aristocrat who amassed a great number of properties throughout the south of England, and in particular in Hampshire, possibly as many as fifty-three all told at the time of Domesday.

One manor had eight hides (1 hide=120 acres) and a mill, and its population consisted of eight villagers and six smallholders and their families, and six slaves. The other manor had seven hides, two mills and the church, and was inhabited by the families of 31 villagers and nine smallholders, and six slaves. This is presumably the manor that eventually became the Warnford Park estate, as it had the church and two of the mills.

Those population numbers for Warnford might equate to roughly 250 people, which made it actually quite a large place for those times – bigger in the 11th century in terms of its population than any other Meon Valley village except East Meon, in contrast to the present day, when it is one of the smallest.

The four buildings I am going to discuss all lie in the Park: the Church of Our Lady, the 13th century ruin of King John’s House which stands close to the church, the long-demolished Warnford Park House, and the Paper Mill building.

Paper Mill

Domesday claimed three mills for Warnford. Today there seems to be evidence of the locations of two of them. One is the remains of a water wheel at a small weir a short distance from the church in the middle of the Park. The other is a restored paper mill building, also in the Park, presumably built on the site of one of the mills referred to in Domesday. This mill was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, paper mill in Hampshire. It was built around 1618 by the then owner of Warnford, Sir Thomas Neale, and paper was made at Warnford for at least 170 years, though by 1816 it had stopped working, perhaps due to the technical changes in the industry that led to the establishment in the country as a whole of far fewer but much larger mills. Currently the building has been restored and is available as a bed and breakfast.

Paper mill at Warnford © Ashok Vaidya
https://catalogue.millsarchive.org/watermill-warnford-park-2

Church of Our Lady

Warnford’s parish church, the Church of Out Lady, stands in the middle of Warnford Park, isolated for centuries from the village it once served. It is presumed that this isolation occurred, as already mentioned, when the owners moved the village to its present location outside the park, though exactly when this happened isn’t clear.

The Church of Our Lady in Warnford Park. Hampshire.
© Simon Burchell

It has been suggested that the original church in Warnford was founded by Saint Wilfrid in the 7th century, during the years when he was bringing Christianity to the heathenish people of the Meon Valley. When the original church was built in Saxon times, the people who came to worship here would have belonged to the Jutish Meonwara tribe who, according to Bede, were “ignorant of the name and faith of God”.

In 1190, when Adam de Port, son of Hugh, decided to rebuild the church, he must have believed that it had a particular association with the saint, for he had a stone tablet inscribed in Latin to record the fact. Today, the tablet sits below what is thought to be a Saxon sun dial. The words on it are:

“Brethren, bless in your prayers the founders of this temple: Wulfric who founded it and good Adam who restored it”

The circular sun-dial is set on a square stone, with leaves carved at the corners, similar to the dial at Corhampton (described here). It is probably also of Saxon date. One presumes it was once on an outside wall which was at some point covered by the 13th century? porch.

Within the church itself is a monument to the family of Sir Thomas Neale, the man who built the paper mill referred to above. The monument has alabaster effigies of Thomas and his two wives lying beneath a panelled canopy. Around the base are the kneeling figures of two sons and seven daughters, four of whom are, somewhat gruesomely, holding skulls, showing that they died before their parents.

© Copyright Mike Searle under Creative Commons Licence.

There’s also a rather grisly gravestone in the churchyard. In the 19th century, George Lewis was the estate carpenter, and used to cut down trees on a Sunday even though he was apparently warned against the ungodly practice. But in 1830, George, persisting in felling trees on the Sabbath, was hit by a tumbling branch and died. His gravestone illustrates his foolhardiness!

© Copyright Basher Eyre under Creative Commons Licence.

King John’s House 

Close by the church are the ruins of what is variously called St John’s or King John’s House. This is a very rare example of a 13th century hall, built in 1210 by a member of the St John family who had married into the de Ports.

Image from British History Online, Parishes: Warnford.
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/hants/vol3/pp268-273

The ruin consists of a hall 52 ft. long by 48 ft. wide, divided by 25 ft high columns into a central span and north and south aisles, and a two-storey building attached at the hall’s west end. The two-storey section seems to have been divided into two rooms on the ground floor, and on the first-floor level are traces of a doorway opening to a staircase or perhaps a gallery at the west of the hall. One imagines this structure might have been part of a larger house though there is no evidence of any other remains adjoining it.

The building appears to have been already in ruins by the 17th century, and was later incorporated into the landscaping as an interesting feature of the pleasure park. In 17th and 18th century documents, the building is referred to as The Old House.

(c) Anthony Brunning / St John's House, Warnford Park, Hampshire / CC BY-SA 2.0

Warnford Park House

Little is known of the early history of the Warnford estate. The earliest park enclosure was possibly a deer park that stretched between Beacon Hill and Old Winchester Hill. In the late 1500s, the estate was owned by William Neale, an auditor to Queen Elizabeth, who built a house near the site of the later mansion. One presumes that King John’s House was either already a ruin by then or perhaps considered by William as unfit as a residence for his family.

William’s son and heir, Thomas, was later knighted and became auditor to King James I. He was the man who built the paper mill. On his death in 1621 – it is his grand monument that lies in the church – Warnford passed to his son, another Thomas, and this Thomas built the later mansion that was apparently referred to as The Place House. His son, yet another Thomas, sold Warnford in 1678 and it moved out of the Neale family, passing through the ownership of several different families until, in 1754, John Smith de Burgh, the 11th Earl of Clanricarde, bought the estate. In 1752, John had changed the family name from Burke to the earlier form of de Burgh, to reflect their Norman-Irish origins. He called his new house Belmont, and the park Senfoy (Saint Foin). 

In the 1770s, the earl hired Lancelot “Capability” Brown to improve the landscape of his Warnford estate. An estate map of 1811 shows that the River Meon was diverted as it entered the park and a long tear-shaped lake was created in a loop, and the river’s exit from the park was arranged via a series of sluices. A walk was created encompassing a sequence of garden buildings including a grotto, a hermitage and a bath-house, the design of which closely resembles an unexecuted Brown design for a lakeside pavilion at Rothley, Northumberland. The old hall, King John’s House, was also apparently deliberately incorporated into the landscape design as a “scenic ruin”.

An illustration from the 19th century shows the house in a landscaped park typical of Brown’s style, with the River Meon forming a lake to the south.

Image from http://www.capabilitybrown.org/garden/warnford

In 1865 the estate was purchased by Henry Woods, a colliery owner and the MP for Wigan, who carried out further alterations to the house, created a formal garden and undertook considerable ornamental planting in the pleasure grounds.

Image from http://www.lostheritage.org.uk/houses/lh_hampshire_warnfordpark_info_gallery.html

During the Second World War, the house was requisitioned by the military, but the troops apparently “severely damaged” it and, after a long decline, the house was demolished in 1956, though the park and pleasure grounds remained in private ownership and a new house was built.

There is, I suppose, nothing very extraordinary about what happened in Warnford over the centuries since it was recorded in the Domesday survey. Estate owners have always done whatever took their fancy to create the environment that met their private and public ambitions. If that meant moving a few tenants out of the way, well so be it. At least, in Warnford, though we don’t know exactly when it happened, the tenants were not entirely displaced. Despite further development in the past century or so on the south side of the road, it is interesting to see to what extent Warnford is, geographically, still a village of two halves and to understand what brought it about.