I think this will be one of our last days out, the weather is getting colder and soon we will be glad to stay indoors where it's cosy and warm.
We had intended to visit Old Soar Manor a number of times, it isn't all that far from us along the A25 and is quite small, so it is only a short visit. We had made an attempt on the previous afternoon, but we became stuck in a huge 10 mile traffic jam, so in the end we gave up and just turned around and went back home.
The next day, we set out again, using a different route avoiding the A25, and enjoyed a lovely drive down little country roads and through picturesque villages. The Manor is quite hard to find - there aren't enough of those brown tourist signs - and Google maps has marked it in slightly the wrong place, but we asked a postman and he directed us correctly.
Old Soar Manor is a rare survival from the time of Edward I. It is part of a stone manor house for a knight built around 1290. At the time, the country was quite lawless, and a knight would have to rely on his own fighting skills and those of his servants to defend his property. So the house was built of Kentish ragstone and designed so that it could be defended. Cross loops - cross-shaped holes in the wall through which arrows could be fired - covered all the approaches to the house and the only internal staircase spiralled clockwise so that any defender retreating up the stairs had free free play for his sword (you had to be right-handed).
The manor originally belonged to a leading Kentish family I have mentioned before, the Culpeppers, and would have consisted of a great hall, around which a number of other rooms were located. Although the great hall no longer remains, the private quarters do, and you can still see the surviving solar, latrine and chapel, as well as the barrel-vaulted undercroft.
What you are looking at in my photograph is the end wall of the chapel, the only room to have glazing. At the back, on the right, the small rather square room is the latrine, and the solar is the room between them.
The red roof you can see on the left of my picture is a Georgian farmhouse, built in 1780, on the site of the great hall which was, by that time, in such a bad state of repair that it had to be demolished.
The entry to the house is through the vaulted undercrofts, or cellars, which were used for storage. I didn't take pictures there, it was too dark, as well as being quite bare.
The next photo is the solar which was reached by the spiral staircase; you can see the entry to it on the left of the photo.
You can also see the wonderful steeply pitched crown-post roof. Each end wall of the solar features a long window; they were originally un-glazed and closed by shutters, the fittings for which can still be seen.
A window seat survives below the window in this picture. It might have been where you sat if you needed better light, perhaps for sewing. This room also had a huge square chimneybreast and fireplace.
On the right of the solar, the narrow door you can see leads into the garderobe, or latrine. The picture below shows this garderobe.
Why do I always seem to be taking photographs of lavatories? The fenced off bit at the back of the picture is where you sat. It discharged into a pit at the foot of the building, and there was a little doorway so that some unfortunate person could dig it out periodically. The room may also have been used to store clothes, as the smell was believed to keep away pests. This might explain the word 'garderobe' which seems an odd name for a lavatory.
Below is a picture of the chapel; it has a large window which, in contrast to those in the rest of the house, was completely glazed. The original entry to the chapel was from outside. The present rough stone doorway from the solar which you are looking through here may have been made when the house was used as a farm building.
The room was used by the family as a chapel, but also served as an office for the chaplain who could read and write and acted as secretary to the Lord of the Manor. It had some decorative features.
This is a piscina, which the chaplain would have used to wash the vessels after the Mass. It is apparently of a slightly later date than the house itself.
We spent quite a while wandering about and reading the interesting information boards in one of the undercrofts. Apparently, the survival of the knight's house for over 700 years is due mainly to its having been extremely well built, so that generations of farmers found it very useful. It passed to the National Trust in 1947.
We read so many interesting details about the place and the interesting nearby village of Plaxtol that we drove off to look at it. On the way, we passed this pond with duck house which I could not resist photographing. I should explain, for those who don't follow the British news, that during the fairly recent scandal about Members of Parliament claiming ridiculous things as expenses, all the newspapers mentioned the Conservative MP who claimed the most enormous sum for a duck house for his duck pond. I have no memory of where the duck house was, but it looked pretty much like this one! Again, we both forgot cameras and I had to use the camera on my phone; without a zoom lens, I'm afraid the duck house is rather tiny in the middle of the huge field.
The village of Plaxtol was indeed charming, and another day when Paul is less anxious to get back home and do other things we mean to go back and have a walk around. There are a number of interesting historic houses to look at, and apparently you can buy a small guide to them all in the Post Office.
I found a different route home, again along back roads, so it was a very pleasant drive.
My goodness, I am at last catching up with this blog. I'm less than two weeks behind now, and for a lot of those days, there is very little, if anything, to say
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