The first was the castle at Berry Pomeroy, tastefully presented by English Heritage. Originally built as a base from which to fight the Yorkist corner in the Devon episodes of the Wars of the Roses, subsequently bought by the Protector Somerset who got the chop after leading the wrong faction in the time of Edward VI and with the grand rebuilding, the ruins of which are what one sees now, falling to his son.
The grandest bit was the north wing, the pillars of which can be seen in the illustration above, including a large hall and a very long exercise & flirting gallery above. The place fell into disuse not that long after the unfinished rebuilding campaign, and lots of materials - like beams, lead and glass - found their way to another house in Wiltshire, better located for access to the all-important London.
One wonders at the stability of the remaining pillars, originally separating the windows, but one assumes that the heritage people know their stuff. Maybe the are even still a few craft trained veterans from the days of the Ministry of Works, the people who used to stick little blue plaques to the entrances of places such as this.
There were lots of birds - swallows, martens and crows - and at least one bees' nest. There was talk of bats - but the object described as a dead bat with great solemnity and clicking of big camera by a fellow senior turned out, after he had departed, to be nothing more interesting than a dead swallow.
Nice views from the north wing across the valley to the woods opposite. Unconfirmed sighting of buzzard.
Good place for walks if one was inclined, which were not, preferring to push onto Paignton. Where at the southern end of the beach we had some very fair fish and chips from the Pelican Cafe - with old style seaside caff proprietors, not into accents on e's or anything pretentious like that, although an energetic salesman from one of their wholesalers was trying to get them to upgrade their menu a bit.
Stolled back to the northern end, where we tried to get into the imposing red brick church of St. Paul at Preston, The foundation stone was laid in January 1939, in the presence of the then Bishop of Exeter, presumably at a time when the Church of England was in better shape that it is now. Sadly we could not get through to the church, despite their being a seniors' thé dansant in the church hall.
But quite by chance, we did come across the second folie, a handsome, if rather heavy, late Victorian mansion called Oldway Mansion, built for a leading member of the Singer family, the people who invented the sewing machine. Complete with very fine gardens, a park, a triumphal arch and a round red brick pavilion for horseback exercise in inclement weather. Of especial interest to BH as her mother had played with a couple of Singer twins at the time when her family used to take summer holidays in Paington, complete with maid. But the dates do not quite work: the Singers did not use the Mansion for very long and the twins must have been based somewhere else.
The mansion is now in the hands of the Council, who now have no use for it and discussions, legal and otherwise, have been going on with a hotel developer for some time. I imagine that they are squabbling about what the developers are allowed to do to the building and how much of the park and gardens they are allowed to appropriate to hotel and car park use - just like at our rather more modest Nonsuch Mansion here at Epsom. In the meantime it stands empty, presumably slowly rotting away.
And thinking of Nonsuch Mansion, the handsome new cafeteria built at Chiswick House is just the sort of thing that they should build when they dump the hotel developers and knock the mansion down. Keep Nonsuch Park for the residents not for the hotels! See reference 2.
Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldway_Mansion.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/tricky-heritage.html.
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