2.18.2009

MORE REASONS TO LOVE GREAT BRITAIN

The Landmark Trust Handbook clearly rates review as a literary work.

Excerpts:

Staying in Landmarks: "You may, especially in the country, come across natural intrusions like insects from time to time."

"Penzance itself, accessible by train as well as by road, is a handsome and agreeable town; and beyond it lies that hard old peninsula in which, at places like Chysauster and the Botallack mine, can be found moving evidence of human labour, over an immense span of time." (The Egyptian House, Penzance, Cornwall)

On the selection of Wardens of the Trust of the Grammer School, Kirby Hill, North Yorkshire: "On the feast of the Decollation of St. John the names of six respectable parishioners were to be written on slips of paper and enclosed in balls of wax. These were to be put in a jar of water. Two names were then to be drawn and the jar of water with the remaining names put away in a cupboard".

"The Pineapple is an elaborate summer house of two storeys, built for the 4th Earl of Dunmore. Although classical and orthodox at ground level, it grows slowly into something entirely vegetable; conventional architraves put out shoots and end as prickly leaves of stone. It is an eccentric work, of undoubted genius, built of the very finest masonry." (Dunmore, Central Scotland)

1 comment: