"All the World's a Stage"

Photo: Geoffrey Wallace

Copyright State Library of Victoria

This stained-glass window of Shakespeare at the State Library of Victoria, is one of the earliest stained-glass windows made in Melbourne. More than three metres high, it displays the words, "All the World's a Stage". The production of colonial workmen, it was originally installed in the facade of Coppin's Apollo Music Hall in 1862 on the first floor of the Haymarket Theatre in Bourke Street Melbourne.

Haymarket Theatre 1863
showing the shape of the
stained-glass window in the centre window.

Copyright SLV

It remained there until 1870, when it was removed to George Selph Coppin's (1819-1906) private homes in Richmond and Sorrento and actor-manager Bland Holt's home in Kew until it was left to the trustees of the Melbourne Public Library by Coppin's daughter, Lucy.

George Selph Coppin, C. 1864

Copyright SLV

From the 1960s to 1990s it was displayed against a wall in a stairwell of the Museum. After a major refurbishment of the State Library, the window was placed in storage and in 2005 extensively restored by stained-glass artist Geoffrey Wallace and installed in the La Trobe Domed Reading Room.

Photo: Geoffrey Wallace

Copyright SLV

Domed Reading Room

The Spring 2006 edition of the La Trobe Journal (published by the State Library of Victoria Foundation twice yearly in Autumn and Spring), has an interesting piece by Mimi Colligan entitled, 'That window has a history' (page 94) and Geoffrey Wallace's 'Conservation of the Shakespeare Window' (page 104), walks through stage by stage restoration of this beautiful window.

Detail of window before intervention

showing earlier, poor quality glass replacement.

Detail of window after intervention,
showing newly painted glass replacements
in sympathy with the original window.
Copyright SLV

State Library of Victoria
Melbourne Australia

Photo: Anthony Agius

La Trobe Journal link.

NEW YORK CITY'S NARROWEST HOUSE

I've been doing a bit of searching around for our forthcoming trip and found a great site with stories of some of the oldest buildings in New York. The above building is the narrowest in New York city at only 9ft 6inches wide. Built in 1873 on what was a former carriage entrance way between two buildings. Read below a snippet of Bonnie Rosenstock's descriptive history of the house and the many luminaries who once lived there or visited.

'According to the plaque on the front of the building, Edna St. Vincent Millay lived there from 1923-1924 and wrote "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver", for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. No so, says Elizabeth Barnett, literary executor of the Millay Society. Via e-mail, Barnett stated that Millay did not write this poem there. "Millay worked on that poem while living in Europe and finished it before returning to the USA. Millay and her husband lived at Steepletop, Austerlitz, NY, beginning in 1925. She lived there until her death in 1950, her husband until his death in 1949." However, writer Ann McGovern (who lived at the building sometime in the late 1980s) asserted in a newspaper interview that Millay wrote part of "The King's Henchmen" there.'

Further reading can be found here.

Old Sarum & Pillars of The Earth

This week we watched a fantastic episode of the English "Time Team" at Salisbury Cathedral. The Team was there in October 2008 and were digging right at the footings of the Cathedral.

'The Team opened a trench right next to the Cathedral to uncover the Beauchamp Chapel, built for one of Salisbury's most colourful Bishops, Richard Beauchamp but demolished hundreds of years ago. A trench was also opened up to explore the site north of the Cathedral where the original Bell Tower and spire once stood, also now long since disappeared.

Following their usual action-packed three day schedule the team digging the Beauchamp Chapel trench uncovered a mystery skeleton, as well as other finds which help shed light on the Cathedral in Beauchamp's time and the actions of subsequent generations. There was disappointment though as the Bishop's own tomb was discovered and found to be empty - robbed centuries ago with the Bishop's bones probably moved to the Cathedral's main Nave in 1789.' - Salisbury Cathedral.org.uk

Time Team at Salisbury Cathedral

About twenty years ago I borrowed a book, "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. I really became engrossed in this historical novel about Old Sarum, the site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury, the building of a cathedral, the beginning of Gothic architecture, the loves, the losses.

Ken Follett says: 'When I started writing, back in the early Seventies, I found I had no vocabulary for describing buildings. I read a couple of books on architecture and developed an interest in cathedrals. I became a bit of a train spotter on the subject. I would go to a town, like Lincoln or Winchester, check into a hotel and spend a couple of days looking around the cathedral and learning about it. Before too long, it occurred to me to channel this enthusiasm into a novel.'

In November 2007 The Pillars of the Earth was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the 60th Oprah's Book Club selection and is #1 on the The New York Times trade paperback list and #8 on its mass market paperback list (9th December 2008).

The Pillars of the Earth is one of the '101 Books to Read Before You Die' chosen by patrons of Exclusive Books - it is 27th on the list and is one of the top 100 books chosen by British readers.

Salisbury Cathedral From the Meadows - John Constable, 1831

The landscape around Salisbury was captured by the artist John Constable in several paintings.

I now have my own copy of Pillars and look forward to reading it again.

DICKENS

John Charles Huffam Dickens 1812-1870

The former seaside home of English novelist Charles Dickens, where he wrote part of his classic David Copperfield, is for sale at $A4.1 million.

The cliffside house in Broadstairs, Kent, was built in 1801 and has six bedrooms and its own cells. It was the residence of the fort captain during the Napoleonic Wars and originally named Fort House.

This was later changed to Bleak House - the name of another famous Dickens work. He is thought to have planned that novel there and part-written David Copperfield in the sea-facing study.

Bleak House, Broadstairs, Kent

His later house, at Gad's Hill Place, Higham, Kent, is now a Visitors' Centre. There is a delightful story written in the early 1900s about Gadshill, as it is sometimes spelt, at this link.

Gad's Hill Place, Higham, Kent

As an aside, I remember my Mother saying to us children, "What the dickens are you doing?"; so I went to look up the saying and found this -

What the dickens - exclamation of surprise or puzzlement.

This has nothing to do with Charles Dickens, as is often assumed. Dickens actually comes from a 16th century euphemism for the Devil. It may be an altered pronunciation of devilkin, meaning related to the Devil and it was certainly in use long before Charles was born. Shakespeare's 1601 play The Merry Wives of Windsor contains the words 'I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.'

RELUBBUS MOOR

Relubbus Bridge - Stanhope Alexander Forbes 1929

Penlee House Gallery, Penzance Cornwall

Happily one of my favourite programs is back on TV - the English production, Grand Designs. It is a repeat but I so enjoy the shows, I'll watch two or three times. The last program was about a young couple restoring a pile of rocks to the former glory of a medieval farmhouse which had been in the young man's family for centuries. The site was in the Brecon Beacons National Park, a mountain range in South Wales. This program was made in 2001 and I'd be most interested to know whether or not they toughed it out. The position was to die for; the view magnificent but they would be living without electricity and so exposed to the elements.

Their story brought to mind a little stone cottage close to our hearts. This story is about my husband DMJ and his beginnings.

DMJ was born at Bodriggy Maternity Home, Hayle, Cornwall. In 1941 his Mother was evacuated from her home in Plymouth and sent to Relubbus Moor, St. Hilary, Cornwall. His father was in the navy and was on a ship somewhere (in fact he was on five ships during the war and they all went down). The little cottage DMJ went to after birth was called 'Rose Cottage' and Minnie Jenkins (soon to be Aunt Min) took them in. They lived there for four years while WW2 raged and it was there, near the Relubbus Bridge, that little DMJ threw his first line into the River Hayle.

Many moons later....

In 2005 DMJ took his first trip back to England since 1949 when he arrived in Australia on the H.M.S. Ormond with his parents. His host in England, as a surprise, drove him down from Stoke-on-Trent to Relubbus to re-visit the cottage. When they arrived, after directions from the local historian, they found that the cottage was under quite extensive renovations and additions.

Aunt Min used to shoot at blackbirds from one of the top windows.

DMJ found a little piece of slate at the site and brought it home as a souvenir. As yet I haven't visited England but it is my dream to do so. When the trip is planned, Rose Cottage will be on the agenda. We'll go and knock on the door to hopefully find out about more of the history. We plan to drive all over Cornwall, King Arthur territory and the lakes district and, perhaps, visit the district where my ancestors lived, Cheriton-Fitzpaine in Devon.

LA FENICE (The Phoenix)

Last week I watched a documentary, 'The Phoenix Rises Again', about the re-building of the famous opera house, Gran Teatro la Fenice di Venezia. It took 630 days working non-stop on the restoration and the end result was fitting for what it is, a grand opera house.

In 1996 an Italian electrician from Venice deliberately lit a fire that burnt La Fenice to the ground. He and his cousin had been hired as sub-contractors on the renovation of the opera house. As they were behind schedule, they would have faced hefty fines which would have bankrupted them.

This was the second fire to destroy the opera house since it opened in 1792. After a fire in 1836 it was rebuilt on a new site to the original plans of Tommaso and Giambattista Meduna.

When the legendary phoenix rose from the ashes again in 2003, its rebirth was celebrated with a series of concerts and partying.

WORKS COMPLETED

The foundation stone of St. John's Anglican Cathedral in Brisbane was laid in 1901 by the Duke of Cornwall on his way home from opening our first Federal Parliament. The building is finally completed after being cloaked in scaffolding periodically as the church struggled to raise the money to complete it. The final stages have cost about $37 million, completing the west end of the building with its two towers and spires and finishing the central bell tower.

The time it's taken to build it is not unusual; St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney took just under 150 years, St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in Adelaide began in 1850 and work lasted until the late 1990s, just under 150 years and work began on St. Edmundsbury Cathedral in East Anglia, England in the Middle Ages, through to completion just three years ago.

St. Edmundsbury Cathedral

Gothic architecture had its origins in Northern Europe, cold and dark. In the Middle Ages larger windows were designed to allow more light in and a system of buttresses were used to withstand the forces in the building.

St. John's was designed by British architect John Loughborough Pearson, recognised as one of the great Gothic Revival architects of the 19th century. Pearson died four years before the first stone was laid but his son, Frank Pearson, took over the practical details of completing and simplifying the design but essentially it was his father's design. The size of the windows are much narrower than cathedrals in Melbourne, Sydney and Europe. Pearson deliberately narrowed them to cope with the Brisbane climate.

Read more on neo-Gothic architecture at Wikipedia.

HALDON BELVEDERE

My ancestors on my Father's side sailed on "The Duchess of Northumberland" to Australia from Devon England in 1841; a subject I'll broach at a later date. Haldon Belvedere, above, was not very far away from whence they came. Below is the story about the castle and the link for further information. My girlhood dreams were of living in such a place.

Haldon Belvedere/Lawrence Castle is a landmark on the Devon skyline which is visible from miles around. It was originally built by Sir Robert Palk, a past Governor of Madras who was reputed to be one of the richest men in England in the late 1700s. He had made his fortune in India while in the employ of the East India Company and this allowed him to purchase Haldon House in Dunchideock and estates extending to 11,600 acres. The house was extended to establish a grandiose mansion designed on Buckingham House in London. All that remains now is the stable block and staff quarters which have been converted into the Lord Haldon Country House Hotel and a private dwelling.

The Palks used the Belvedere to entertain special guests such as King George 111 and later, Marconi is said to have carried out tests at the site which has evidence of having been a Neolithic settlement. The triangular tower was extensively renovated in 1994 to illustrate the magnificence of its fine architecture, its ornate plasterwork, gothic windows and mahogany flooring. The spiral stone staircase with cantilevered steps, wrought iron and mahogany balustrade and hand rail, leads to the roof terrace where the best views are to be had. The building is, without doubt, one of the finest examples of this type of 18th Century tower, the design of which is based on the Shrub Hill Tower which stands in Windsor's Great Park.

The restoration was commended by winning a Civic Trust award in 1999.