Jan and I recently visited Kelmscott, the village in Oxfordshire where William Morris, his fellow Arts & Crafts designer and wife Jane, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti leased Kelmscott Manor as their country retreat. In one of the rooms there are a few objects from Iceland. I asked the volunteer who was there to answer questions how these items came to be in the house. He explained that Morris was angry because his wife spent a lot of time in conversation with Rosetti. It seems that this was, in fact, something of a ménage à trois, although the rather decorous information supplied by the helpful volunteer guide leaves the visitor in some doubt as to the exact nature of Jane’s relationship with Dante. It was certainly sufficiently troublesome to William to cause him to travel to Iceland to distance himself from Dante and Jane’s friendship. Recent research suggests that Jane’s relationship with Rosetti was not her only such affair.
One of the Icelandic artefacts on display is an askur carved in 1874, a wooden bowl used to store food, which also functioned as a plate. It was especially useful in traditional turf or wooden houses which had much less furniture than we are used to today. In the 19th century Icelanders ate dinner from an askur sitting on their beds.
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| An Icelandic askur |
Kelmscott Manor was built by a farmer, Thomas Turner, in 1570. An additional wing was added in the 17th century. The Turner family occupied the house until 1734, when they leased it out after the death of George Turner. William and Dante leased the house in 1871. After William’s death in 1896 Jane continued to live there and purchased the house in 1913. After Jane’s death her daughters occupied it until one of the daughters, May Morris, bequeathed it to Oxford University on her death in 1938. Oxford evidently tired of May’s stipulation that the house be maintained as a museum and passed it to the Society of Antiquaries in 1962. The fabric of the house is as it was in the Morris’ time and is furnished and decorated in part with objects that once belonged to the couple (including, for example, some of William’s books and some Dürer prints), textiles designed by Jane and William and one by May. Other objects donated by the Turner family were typical of the era, but were not necessarily owned by the Morris family.
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| Kelmscott Manor |
Morris was buried in the graveyard of St. George’s church in Kelmscott. The church was, until 1430, designated as a “chapel of ease”, a sort of parish subsidiary built for the convenience of worshippers who lived too far from the parish church to attend there regularly. The doorway and nave are Norman. The addition of the South Chapel about 1320 completed the church plan. Clerestory windows, the final Medieval addition, were added to the nave in 1430. The bellcote (there is no tower) houses an early 13th century bell, one of the oldest in Britain. The south porch was added in Tudor times about 1550. William and Jane are both buried, with their daughters Jenny and May, in the graveyard. The Morris’ friend Philip Webb designed a simple stone monument to mark their graves.
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| St George's Kelmscott |
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| The altar of St George's Kelmscott |
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| A stained glass window showing St. George slaying the dragon, St George's Kelmscott |
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| The Morris grave |
St. George’s Kelmscott escaped the Victorian gothic makeovers that Morris felt disfigured many Medieval churches. He founded (with Philip Webb and others) the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings in 1877, which is still active in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, to prevent such ‘restorations’.
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| The Thames between Kelmscott and Buscot lock with WWII pillbox |
During our second visit to Kelmscott Jan and I walked the Thames Path from Kelmscott upstream to Buscot lock. In between rain showers this was a quite idyllic walk. Great numbers of dark blue-green dragonflies fluttered among the riverside plants, hunted by swifts. A hare sat in a field on the other side of the river. A solitary swan sailed serenely by. I was reminded by the lush vegetation of a comment made by two of my authors at Thames & Hudson. Graham Diprose and Jeff Robins had studied the work of Henry Taunt (1852-1922) who sailed the Thames in a small boat with its own darkroom. Taunt photographed and mapped the Thames and published the first edition of his illustrated A New Map of the River Thames in 1872. The sixth and final edition was issued in 1879. Graham and Jeff set out to photograph with a modern digital camera the views with which Taunt had illustrated his map (unfortunately, the resulting book was published not by me but by my publishing friend John Nicoll who managed Frances Lincoln Ltd. after the death of his wife who founded the company). Graham and Jeff remarked to me that the Victorian Thames was a working river. Abundant trees, bushes and other riverside plants which make the Thames so agreeable for leisure, were a liability for a river devoted to commerce. Their book* documented these contrasting faces of the Thames.
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| St Mary Buscot |
Jan and I walked to the church of St Mary Buscot, built to a 13th century plan, with 15th century additions. It was restored in 1854, and curiously enough, despite William’s reservations about renovations of historic buildings, Morris & Co. had a hand in a later restoration. William’s friend Edward Burne-Jones designed four stained glass windows, manufactured by Morris & Co. and installed between 1892 and 1924. Buscot was very much Burne-Jones territory. He also painted four panels at Buscot Park house which illustrated a poem, The Legend of Briar Rose, written by William Morris.
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| Burne Jones, The Briar Wood |
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| Burne-Jones, The Council Chamber |
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| Burne-Jones, Garden Court |
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| Burne Jones, The Rose Bower |
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| The Plough Inn at Kelmscott, an altogether more luxurious inn than it would have been in Morris' day. |
*Graham Diprose and Jeff Robins. The River Thames Revisited. In the Footsteps of Henry Taunt. London: Frances Lincoln Limited, 2007
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