Durham, Doddington, and cheese

Yesterday we went to Doddington Hall for a pre-Christmas outing. Doddington is near Lincoln, and is a Smythson house. For many years we lived in Wollaton, and Wollaton Hall is  very famous and elaborate Smythson house, although quite spoiled internally. Hardwick hall, just up the A1 is Smythson, and a wonderful survival, with most of the original furnishings. Smythson is buried in St Leonard’s, Wollaton, and his monument actually calls him “architect”, which must be a very early usage of the term, if not the first.

Doddington, front, with sculpture by Andrew Smith,
last summer

Doddington, rear, with frost

Doddington is smaller and simpler than Hardwick or Wollaton, but it is lovely. We went in the summer for the biennial sculpture exhibition; it must have been at least twenty years since we last visited, and the next generation of the family have succeeded. The gardens are improved and the produce of the enormous kitchen gardens are sold in a shop, along with high quality meats, cheeses, pies, cakes, bread etc. It’s jolly good. And there’s an excellent café and restaurant.

So this weekend we have friends staying, and saw that Doddington is open for a brief period in winter, with the house decorated for Christmas. So we booked the restaurant for lunch and went off.

It was a cold and frosty morning, (though way past three o’ clock) so we didn’t spend as much time in the gardens as they deserve, although we did make sure to do the turf maze. Can’t resist a maze or a labyrinth.

Trying the maze

At the centre

The house decorations were just gorgeous, and perfectly in keeping. There were huge displays of dried hydrangea heads, holly, ivy and white stalks and seed heads. There were ivy leaves made from cut up sheet music, origami flowers, and paper bells. A group of wicker work angels, whom we had seen in the gardens during the sculpture exhibition, were suspended from the ceiling. One room, which contains a wonderful decorated Egyptian tent, brought back to the house by a previous owner, had paper silhouettes of the three kings. A choir sang carols in the main hall.

Choir in the hall

But the piece de resistance was the long gallery at the top of the house. You opened the door into near darkness, and walked into a softly lit forest (and I mean forest – there were countless trees). The pine smell, and the cold and the subtle lighting, made it feel just like going in to Narnia. There were wickerwork angels here, too, standing so their shadows were cast on the ceiling. You followed the meandering path through the forest, and reached a large tree, decorated with white lights and “icicles”. It was brilliant.

The forest, in the gallery

Then we had an excellent lunch, with crackers and mince pies.

The best thing about the decorations was the imagination and work that had gone into them, not expensive or showy ingredients.

Last weekend we went to see friends and family in the north east, which was delightful in itself, and as a bonus we went to a short, informal carol concert in Durham Cathedral. The choir wasn’t singing, unfortunately, but it was lovely. After the service we visited the Venerable Bede, and St Cuthbert. Durham may well be my favourite cathedral in the whole world. 

 I do like singing carols, and know nearly all the words of nearly all the carols, because for about twelve years the children and I, and any friends we could persuade, sang carols on a Saturday before Christmas outside the shops in Wollaton, just by the pedestrian crossing and outside the post office, and collected for Save the Children. We used to get about £100, so it was very well worthwhile, although sometimes we were frozen by the end.

On the way back to Nottingham we stopped off at a farm shop and got a beautiful small whole Coverdale cheese, to eat with the Christmas cake. Once back, we went out to Long Clawson and bought the Christmas half Stilton. So now I feel madly Christmassy, and almost organised.