The Swelle Life

Lavender Fields For-e-ver

A few weeks ago when my parents were visiting from Canada, we took advantage of the great summer weather that finally arrived and took them to my favourite places in Northumberland, some of the most gorgeous country you'll ever see. I'd been to Cragside before and we hiked the incredible rhododendron forests that lead to their formal gardens, which we saw here and here, but we didn't really have the energy to give Lord Armstrong's spectacular Victorian mansion the attention it deserved, so this time we made a point of it. That post is yet to come, there is just so much to show and tell and research further (the house is a feat of engineering brilliance), so this one is more about the scenery. After making our way to the other side of the estate's miles of gorgeous forest, I looked to my right and saw lavender fields as far as I could see. What I'm showing you is like a spit in the ocean, pretty but no indication of the grand landscape it is a part of with its rolling hills upon rolling hills, all spiked with lavender. I have to go back.

 

The historic Victorian mansion at Cragside which literally sits in the crag. You can see that better here

The suspension bridge that takes you across the estate's forest (see the lavender in the foreground)

Photos © The Swelle Life

Floral Friday! Random Flowers and Animal Friends

Happy Friday! Well, it's a sunny 13°C today on the coast in the north east of England - I'm sweating just typing this, I may have to shower again! I know, there is nothing more banal than complaining about the weather, but when it's mid-July and this is considered 'glorious' (I uttered that to myself while walking on the beach this morning, yes I talk to myself), that's a sign that things are not as good as they should be. Surely there are things to be grateful for when weather can create catastrophic situations for people, and I do keep this in mind. But as humans we need sun to keep us happy and upbeat and not snarking at our husbands (just me?), and we don't ask for a lot here. I'll take the 13°C, just let the sun stay out a bit longer, please. (I don't know who I'm talking to.) 

Flowers cheer me up, so maybe you'll get a little jolt as well. These are some shots I've had around for a while, taken in my neighbourhood. A yellow tulip giving us a peak inside;  a gorgeous, fluffy blossom tree - I'm not sure what kind this is, do you know? - and a tall plant with many tiny raspberry buds that I see in every second garden. I should know the name of that one, we've got some in the back!

And more randomness:  this is one of the resident birds in Alnwick's Ornamental Garden, a pretty white dove

And some Northumberland Blackface sheep in Belsay. The countryside is dotted with all kinds of sheep, but these are particularly nice to look at. 

Photos © The Swelle Life

Floral Friday! A Green Stroll Through Alnwick Castle Estate

Last spring I visited Alnwick Gardens and Castle for a story I was doing on north east English castles and gardens for an American magazine, and I think it's time to do a show and tell! With spring arriving again (sort of - it came early all gorgeous, sunny and warm, and now I've had to pull my winter scarves back out) I can't wait to get out there and explore more of the stunning Northumberland countryside. In the meantime, I use my photos to imagine I'm there.

So let's start on a little tour of the grounds at Alnwick - this is more greenery than flowers but next week we'll walk through the gorgeous gardens - beginning with the Treehouse Restaurant which is what greets you as you enter the estate. I love that this magnificent forest abode actually serves fantastic local fare - pretty tourist trap it is not. I was there on this day with my lovely friend Luisa and we hadn't made reservations before our outing and couldn't get a table (though they did try), but luckily I'd eaten there twice before. Then again, I knew what I was missing!

This is the view as you walk away from the Treehouse without lunch in your tummy (it's the same if you do have lunch in your tummy):

This is inside the part of the castle where the Duke of Northumberland lives with his family. Yes, they do live there sometimes and you can see many of the rooms during visiting hours in the summer. There are family photos everywhere in the one sitting room, you kind of feel like you shouldn't be there looking at everything because it does actually appear lived in, rather than a museum-type moment frozen in time. I took a sneaky pic of the China Gallery, I couldn't resist how gorgeous it looked with the jewel tones, carved mahogany, candelabra chandeliers and the reflection of the glass.

Alnwick Castle is the second largest inhabited castle in England, after Windsor Castle.  It's 1000 years old if you count back to its original structure. The history of it all is quite interesting, you can read about it here

If you drive outside of the estate and around through Alnwick, you can see the sprawling view of the castle; however I'm not showing you the full sprawl because part of it was being renovated and scaffolding is not charming! (Invariably, whenever I visit an architectural site something is being renovated, it's so frustrating!)

Behind me was a pretty pond:

 

 Photos © The Swelle Life

Floral Friday! The Last of Wallington Pt.1

If this is Part 1 I guess it's not really the last then, is it! But it is winding down. Two weeks ago we saw Wallington's gorgeous greenhouse and now we walk through canopied paths to another walled garden with a small pond. There are more photos than I realised that are worth sharing, the garden is just bursting with beauty, so next week we'll finish with the scenery on the walk out of this living wonderland. It started to rain halfway through, but it would take a lot more than that to send me running from Wallington. Golfball-sized hail would do it.

To take the rest of the tour see here

I hope you like green.

Photos © The Swelle Life

Floral Friday! Wallington's Lush Greenhouse

This Floral Friday I take you back to Wallington's walled garden, one of my most favourite places, which I'm really missing especially now that the winter bitterness is beginning to creep in. Their picturesque greenhouse is just a dream, it had me wondering how I could live in one. (Probably wouldn't work out anyway, I'm a huge wimp when it comes to cold.)

For more on glorious Wallington, including their dreamy pond with a floating bed and baby black coots flitting upon the lily pads, see here (you'll have to scroll down a bit but be sure to catch Versailles on the way!)

(I think it's funny there's a picture of a flower hanging amongst the superior live specimens!)

Nice place for a cat nap

Photos © The Swelle Life

Floral Friday! Wallington's Walled Garden

Now we enter the walled garden at Wallington at last. After a beautiful walk in, past the mansion and past the lush lily pond with baby coots frollicking about and a bed floating in it, I came upon the wall and went through the wood and iron door. On the other side was the most stunningly landscaped garden with sheep grazing on the green hills that overlook this romantic dreamland.

 
 
  

I love the texture of this plant that I don't know the name of.

 

 
    
   

 

   
     

 

Photos © The Swelle Life

Floral Friday! The Walk Into Wallington

(Apologies for missing Versailles which I promised for yesterday. We travelled back to Toronto to find that the cable and internet were out. So Rogers made a liar out of me. Ach. However, I am flagellating myself for not delivering, it's way overdue.) 

The proper title of this post is actually 'The Walk Into Wallington's Walled Garden' but that's a big of a tongue twister. Last week I showed you the incredible pond, dense with lily pads and frollicky baby coons, which is actually what's behind this gate after you've walked a couple of minutes through the forest:

And we continue the tour which makes no chronological sense at all because I'm taking you back to the beginning!

 

The mansion at Wallington is a real treasure trove of curiosities. Last year I showed you the dollhouse rooms but there's so much more and I'll get to it one day ...

   

Next week we finally get into the walled garden which is so beautiful you won't be able to stand it.

Photos © The Swelle Life

Floral Friday: Six Baby Birds and a Bed in a Pond

First - I've been travelling this week and am now in Toronto for my summer visit home. Next week I will get back to Interiors and Exteriors on Thursday and finish showing you Marie Antoinette's domain at Versailles...

I think Monet would have appreciated this scene. Carrying on from last Friday's intro to my visit to the walled garden at Wallington in Northumberland (in the north east of England in case you're not familiar), I take you to the pond which was a wonderful surprise on my way to the gardens. After walking through a forest we came upon the lily pad covered water and I noticed some movement on the surface - it was six fluffy black baby birds! I think they were coots, a marsh bird. They were so light that as they ran with their spindly legs the lily pads didn't even move.

 

Two other babies look for food amongst the firm yellow flowers:

 

What is that off in the distance?

Why, a bed of course!

I can't find anything about this bed which makes it even more mysterious. It's an installation, but who put it there? I don't really care why, it was neat. Like a (very) small-scale Cristo and Jean-Claude.

It started to pour. Luckily this was on my way out after being through the garden (see some of those next week) and it wasn't enough to deter me from taking another shot:

Photos © The Swelle Life

Floral Friday! Contrasts at Wallington

I went back to Wallington in Northumberland today to photograph their stunning walled garden which I missed when I visited last year. And had I actually known what I was missing I wouldn't never have been able to leave. Last time, I spent a couple of hours in the mansion, particularly in the dollhouse rooms which you can see here and here (I never did post anywhere near what I had altogether, I hope to dig out the rest one day).

These gardens quickly became my new favourite place and I'd love to go back with a picnic and just take it all in without my eyeball pressed against the viewfinder. A serene, huge pond covered in lily pads with baby coots (a black marsh bird) running atop greeted us on the way to the garden gate, and I couldn't pull myself away. (Somewhere my husband is nodding firmly and slowly with eyes glazed over.) Oh! And there was a red and white bed floating in it! Come back next Friday to see what I'm talking about.

To start, here are some of my favourite shots from a small patch in their enormous and breathtaking garden. The gardener seems to have wanted to create a bit of drama and planted a few varieties of vivid flowers with leaves so dark they appeared black. I especially love the first photo, the flowers appear as if they were painted.

 
 
  
 
 
 
 

Photos © The Swelle Life

Flower Therapy

It's going to be 6°on Wednesday in Newcastle which means it will be even colder on the coast. In England that temperature is the psychological equivalent of getting caught in an arctic blizzard naked. While in my Canadian mind anything above 0° isn't really winter (I do realise we're still two months away from official winter but we all know that crisp and lovely autumn days are shortlived), I still can't deal with the cold, so in that way I fit in well with the Brits.

Instead of lamenting the arrival of dwarfed days where it's pitch black at 3 pm - who's up for some mid-afternoon clubbing? - I've decided to keep my head sunshiney and spring-like by indulging in some flower therapy, in the form of of photos I haven't posted before, from my house, neighbourhood and the natural wonderland that is Northumberland. I could live forever in a field like the one below. For more, including the Quarry Garden at Belsay which is one of my most favourite places on earth, see here.

  

 

 

 All photos by Denise Grayson @ The Swelle Life

The Gorgeous Gardens of Cragside Pt. 2 (Plus a Really Cool House)

Carrying on from yesterday's garden post here are more flowers from our visit to Cragside's formal garden and photos of the house itself which I find hard to believe was built in 1863 but my husband doesn't.

 

 

 

Being afraid of heights I got a bit freaked out walking on the foot bridge which you can see in the middle below, but it was the only way to the house from where we were. It's not terribly high so I looked like quite a wuss.

This is our house. That's what I would be saying if I was Lord Armstrong, if he was still alive. It's built into a rocky hillside above a 4 km² forest garden. And you thought you had a lot to prune. Having seen it we can't fathom the maintenance. We took the scenic route out of there and drove for about 10 minutes, trying not to scrape the sides of the car against the rocks, before we were finally out. It is a truly stunning and awesome landscape.

 

 

The house boasts a sandstone rock garden that is said to be Europe's largest.

 

The Gorgeous Gardens of Cragside

 

Last weekend we took a drive through Northumberland to Cragside House, Gardens and Estate, a National Trust heritage site. We'd heard it was one of the most beautiful sites in the area if not England, and quickly remedied having been ignorant of it for so long.

We didn't have time or the energy to go inside the house which is like a modern castle (it's Victorian but that's modern in English terms). To get around the estate grounds requires a bit of hiking skill or at least hardy footwear, so I'll save the history of the intriguing Lord Armstrong for when do see inside this house of magic - the industrialist had the first home to be lit by electricity thanks to his inventive and resourceful nature.

This is a cottage on the grounds near where we had lunch (at which point I remembered that the Wolford cropped leggings I was wearing weren't fully opaque - especially when stretched thin ie. over the bum - and I was wearing a short baby doll dress over them and it was windy. And we were hiking up hills. Well, at least I wore the right footwear.)

The landscape is so lush and there were blossom bushes everywhere. Stunning, but allergy pills are a must next time. I got off easy with a few sneezes.

  

 

I took these at the formal gardens. Its beauty lies in the close-ups; it's not so much a garden that is constructed for grand scenery but rather for its individual elements, like this koi pond complete with lily pads:

 

 

 

There was a little strip of garden along one wall that had the loveliest variety of flowers...

 

...which I will continue in the next post with some photos of the amazing house and its 'largest in Europe' rock garden!

The Hauntingly Beautiful Dollhouses of Wallington, Pt. 2

 

Carrying on from Tuesday's post on the enchanting dollhouses of Wallington, here are more rooms with unbelievable detail, like the little buckets under the shelf in the pantry on which several plates of food are waiting, as if the family is about to sit down and eat at any minute. Or how each of the mirrors and picture frames are completely different and highly ornate as was the style at the time.

If you enjoy these, well good! There are lots more from the Wallington house to come...

 

The Hauntingly Beautiful Dollhouses of Wallington, Pt. 1

 

I'm working like a mad woman to launch Swelle Boutique (it's nearly there!) but I wanted to leave you with something special should it be a couple days before I'm able to post again. I visited Wallington a few weeks ago, a National Trust property in Morpeth, Northumberland (that's in the north east of England) with a grand mansion and gorgeous lawns, lakes, parkland and woodland. There's also a beautiful walled garden which we didn't have time to see, but it was cold and gloomy so we'll save that for a lovely day.

I'll tell you more about Wallington in future posts (there is quite a bit to show) but for now here is the first part of the dollhouses from the 17th century mansion's dollhouse room which contains one huge house - like an apartment block - and several smaller ones, the interiors of which are magnificent and shabby all at once. The detail of the period furniture and decor (early 1900s) is breathtaking and some of it is in quite a state of disrepair - evident in the wear on the fabrics and wallpapers and headboards askew - and it creates the feeling that these rooms have actually been lived in by the heavy chested tenants (see below, they are heaving!) for the past century. The effect is utterly charming.

The photos are a bit blurred, the rooms in the dollhouses were very dim and I was shooting through their tiny windows. But it kind of lends to the ghostly feeling and apparently I'm lucky to have had the opportunity to take the photos, it's only been a year since they've allowed cameras. 

Want to see more? Here's Part 2

Paradise Found: The Quarry Garden at Belsay

   

A little while ago I did a series of posts with photos from my first visit to Belsay Hall, Castles and Gardens (you can read those here, just scroll down) in the beautiful Northumberland countryside. I had yet to show the quarry garden which actually made me gasp as I walked into it and got an eyeful of its awesome rock formations, grotto and blossom trees. I could live in those gardens. I got to visit again when I was invited to the press day for their latest art exhibition called Extraordinary Measures which was a fantastic experience. I'll be posting about it just as soon as I can finish it. It was a fascinating exhibition, there's a lot to talk about!

And on to the gardens - are they not absolutely beautiful?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by Denise Grayson @ The Swelle Life

A Look Back at Picture House at Belsay: Forest Bedrooms, Teacups & Silver Dipped Ballgowns

Geraldine Pilgrim (corridor productions)
Dreams of a winter night

In some recent posts we saw Stella McCartney's stunning Lucky Spot installation at Belsay Castle, a horse made of 8,000 crystals assembled on wires in a hauntingly beautiful medieval room. The horse was a revival of sorts from a project that began a few years ago when English Heritage invited 15 of the most original and experimental film directors, artists, actresses and designers from Britain and around the world to bring Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens (oh, those gardens! More to come on those) to life with a series of cutting edge art installations.

Picture House opened in spring of 2007 and transformed the neo-classical mansion in Northumberland, its 14th century castle and Grade I Listed gardens with electrifying works of fashion, sculpture, music, design, poetry, music and video.

The next art exhibition to take place on the glorious grounds at Belsay is Extraordinary Measures and I'm thrilled to say I've been invited to their press day to tour the works, hear from the curator and take pictures. It's about a place "where size is off the scale. Where the miniscule is made massive and huge surroundings hide surprises. Where ancient buildings always hold something new" - it sounds like Alice in Wonderland meets the coolest treasure hunt there ever was.

Here's a preview:

Hey, it's the miniature old couple from David Lynch's Mulholland Drive!

And back to Picture House at Belsay, beginning with Viktor & Rolf's centrepiece of silver ballgowns, from their latest collection at the time, drenched in dripping silver in Pillar Hall. Their piece referenced the Dutch tradition of dipping a child's shoe in silver to preserve it as a keepsake. "We were inspired by that same desire to preserve a memory," said Viktor Horsting. "To treasure the past. To freeze time."

 

Geraldine Pilgrim (corridor productions)
Dreams of a winter night

 

Quay Brothers
Coffin of a servant's journey

 

A collaboration between Boudicca and Mike Figgis

 

Tilda Swinton created this piece called Belsayland for Arthur Middleton's bedroom, working alongside her husband, playwright and visual artist John Byrne, and their children. It was realised by Neil Murray in association with Northern Stage.

Corollarium. Northumbria University graduate, Francesca Steele, was awarded the Belsay FellowshipGeraldine Pilgrim (corridor productions) which provided her with the opportunity to exhibit alongside the more well known names.

 

Imogen Cloët and Jacob Polley
The Recollection Rooms

 

Peepshow. Costume designer Sandy Powell created a 'peephole' into Lady Middleton's bedroom, where viewers could spy on the inhabitant.

Photos: The Telegraph

Old Castles, Spring Gardens and Stella McCartney's Crystal Horse Pt. 2

Carrying on from yesterday's post (hence the 'Pt. 2' in the title), here are more photos of my visit to Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens in Northumberland, north east England.

 The stables at Belsay

Belsay Hall is an early 19th century mansion with a Greek doric style slanted roof. It's not the most gorgeous of exteriors, it's very stark but the interiors were interesting. A family by the name of the Middletons actually lived here until 1962. It is now a proper of English Heritage.  

 

 

These Delft tiles lined both sides of the fireplace in one of its large rooms

Belsay Hall from the rear

The scenery from the side of the mansion:

 

Back to Belsay castle, a 14th century medieval castle. The main structure, a substantial three storey rectangular pele tower with rounded turrets and battlements was constructed about 1370, and was the home of the Middleton family. I cannot believe people lived in this, oh how mighty cold it must have been (see photos below). Future generations of the family resided here until the early 19th century when they built and moved into Belsay Hall. 

I have no idea what this is, it was in the ruins part of the castle. Some kind of oven? Maybe Wendy Brandes will know.

The spiral staircase from beneath

This is the room where Stella McCartney's crystal horse was displayed

You could go out onto the roof by the turret and take in the view of the countryside.

The view from the top. Those white specs on the grass are sheep.

 

 

I am going to have to do those glorious gardens in another post as this one is getting long, but I have to show you more of Lucky Spot, the horse that was conceived of by Stella McCartney as part of English Heritage's project to transform Belsay in 2004. It is made of 8,000 Swarovski crystals and when the light floods in through the medieval windows the crystals produce brilliant prismatic patterns across the walls.

 

 

 

I've gathered some images of the other installations that were commissioned for this project and I'll post those tomorrow. It includes Viktor & Rolf.

Old Castles, Spring Gardens and Stella McCartney's Crystal Horse Pt. 1

Today we took advantage of a gorgeous spring day and went off to explore some of the beautiful Northumberland countryside. We drove to Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens and I think I may have stumbled upon paradise. (I thought I found it when I went to Maui but it seems to exist way up here in the north east of England, too.) I just got a new camera and this was the perfect place to try it out, the gardens were spectacular and flooded with mid-afternoon sunlight. 

  
A room in the cellar of Belsay Hall, an early 19th century mansion

 

Belsay Castle. The turret part of the castle is 700 years old

 

And this image below is a bit of a teaser, I have so much more to show from this piece and the project itself. It's an installation conceived by Stella McCartney as part of a project involving thirteen British creatives that was commissioned by English heritage to transform Belsay in 2004. More on that tomorrow!

All photos by Denise Grayson