Friday, August 11, 2006
This is Sudbury Hall and the Museum of Childhood. It's actually close to where I live and I can get there with only two bus changes. There were two funny things in Sudbury Hall. In one room the 'dishy' first lord who got all the money by attracting 3 rich wives also had paintings of his two mistresses [one the alluring actress from the 1600's Nell Gwyn] . The funny part is that both paintings showed the mistresses in very revealing dresses but they were the same dress...did the artist only have one dress they could model in? did the lord only spring for one dress and passed it on to the next mistress? The other funny thing was that plumbing was hidden behind a bookcase and someone had selected books from the collection that only had to do with watery themes like 'Rapid Streams', 'Soake's Hoaxes'. I found a book of childhood memories from WWII in the Museum of Childhood. It contained stories of the difficulties of evacuation to the countryside from London during bombing raids and the terror that the doodlebugs created. We're off to Cambridge next and then a hiatus when I go on a tour of the Lake District, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the Cotswolds.
