About a month ago (I'm so behind with this blog...) we went on a day trip with our program to Broughton Manor and Warwick Castle, which are within an hour from Oxford.
Broughton Manor is this medieval house that is actually owned by the Fiennes family (which includes Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, the actors). There have been a few movies filmed there, including some scenes from Shakespeare in Love, which I guess Joseph Fiennes had something to do with. We got a personal tour from a woman who works there, which was very cool. Aaaaand, pictures!
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| This armor was used in the English Civil War, which occurred in the 17th century, so it was awesome to play around with it |
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| Some scene in Shakespeare in Love was filmed in this stairwell. I can't remember which one it was, though... |
So yea, that was Broughton Manor. I don't have too much to say for each of the pictures, hence the lack of captions. Then we drove to Warwick Castle, which was about an hour away. It was built in the 11th century and is quite large. Nowadays it's kind of touristy (it's become "Disneyfied", is what my tutor said) as they charge you a fair amount to get in and for a lot of different sections of it. There are actors dressed up who lead tours or give speeches sometimes. We spent about 3 hours here and just wandered around. It was great. Pictures!
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| We went down to the Gaol, where they kept some of the prisoners. It was really dark and the passageway was really small |
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| This was completely dark, before my flash. They kept prisoners in there, I guess |
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| Kept prisoners down there, too |
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| This is from within the castle |
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| We climbed up to the top of one of this hill on one side |
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| They have a trebuchet there, which is cool |
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| That was the top of the hill where all those pictures were just taken |
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| They had a peacock garden, which was just about the weirdest thing ever. There were maybe 12 peacocks just wandering around this garden. They weren't shut off or anything, too |
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| And they have hedges of peacocks.... |
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| We went up on the ramparts, and these were all along the wall. I guess people could fit a bow through there and shoot it. I'm not sure though, because those two arm holes are really small |
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| My friend Dan |
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| Guarding the castle |
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| We climbed to the top of that. The stairs were narrow and many |
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| Standing over that grate was a little nervewracking... |
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| This is the surrounding town, which looks really cool |
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| This was a huge gun. It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, though |
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| We went back to the peacock garden at the end, just because it was so weird |
So that was the trip! Feel free to post questions or comments. I'm going to try to be better about posting... My next one will be about Oxford, then one about Scotland, which I went to last weekend. Also, my sister Colleen is coming tomorrow. She'll be here for four days and we're going to London for one of those. Should be fun!
