Following the expedition to the Horton Chapel just reported, on Fetcham to do the church (of reference 1) and the Hall - confusingly known as Fetcham Park (of reference 2).
Treated to tea and cake by some energetic ladies at the door of the church, ably seconded by the vicar who, what with one thing and another was being kept very busy. While in the church we were treated to some piano music, played on a Yamaha keyboard which seemed to come in rather an elaborate fretted case. But the lady was busy, I did not like to disturb her and so the piano cannot be scored, at least not on this occasion.
Plus, inspection of the Yamaha website at reference 3 fails to come up with anything of the sort. You can spend a lot of money on some of their electronic pianos and some of these come in wooden cases, some of them faked up to look quite like a stringed piano. But nothing portable in a light brown, fretted wood case. Perhaps the memory is playing tricks yet again. Nothing quite like a bit of photographic evidence to help it along.
An old church, which still includes what appear to be Norman arches and Norman columns to the nave. Plus a more recent cinema screen behind.
The western end of the cinema operation. Do they use it to make hymn books redundant? A sort of parochial auto-cue?
Perhaps this chap was the prototype for the people now at Taunton, noticed by the MOD at reference 4a? Inspection of reference 4b reveals that indeed he was. And while it does say that the office moved to Taunton on the outbreak of the second world war, it does not say where it moved from and why a retired hydrographer should wind up just outside London. And oddly, for what might think was a vital function, headed up by a modest captain, despite the flotillas of admirals washing around Whitehall and Portsmouth Harbour.
And so onto Fetcham Park, just across the way from the church, presumably once more or less in the pocket of the owner of the park, now a large house standing in around 4 acres of fairly formal garden, with a lot of lawn and at least two water features. Snapped above by somebody else, on another day. A place entirely comparable to Milton Court which we had visited just about two years ago and noticed at reference 5. That is to say a large and old home, with a long and interesting history, but not quite interesting enough for the heritage people and so come into the possession of some commercial operation, either as a headquarters building or, as in this case, to sell on as a quality location in which to do your business or in which to have your wedding or whatever. Pevsner is spectacularly rude about this one, even by his standards. On which I might say that I sometimes find it irritating that an exile from Germany, who had chosen to make his home in this country, was so rude about so many of our buildings. Didn't stop him getting a knighthood though. See reference 6.
As it turned out, we were not allowed inside the house on account of the plague restrictions then in force, but we could peep through some open doors and windows at the rather lushly restored interiors. Lots of fancy plasterwork and florid furniture. All a bit over the top to my mind. Back view above.
But we liked the gardens, and the fountains were soothing, the whole only marred by a bad infestation of brightly coloured crochet work, an infestation which seems to have spread from the top of suburban letter boxes to all over the county. I only wish that the good ladies concerned would use biodegradable yarn for their work. And while I am at it, I wish that the people who erect gaudy memorials made of plastic flowers at places where a much loved son crashed his motorcycle (or whatever) into a lamp post (or whatever), could be persuaded to use biodegradable materials too.
We returned to the churchyard for our picnic, some of which had been allowed to go wild. To my mind a sensible proceeding for graves which are too old to have any surviving relatives to take an interest in them. Much more appropriate than restoration.
We were also able to admire the show-off memorial to a member of a one-time ruling family, the Moons, and we wondered what a chap who wanted a memorial like this would have been like in real life. Sir Francis Graham Moon, Bart., whose life occupied most of the nineteenth century. A sometime Lord Mayor of London.
His parson son was wealthy enough to live in Ballands Hall, across the road, given as a parsonage by an owner of the Park who wanted the land of the original parsonage for his stable block. The catch was that the new parsonage was so big that very few parsons could afford to live in it and they generally let it out to someone who could.
References
Reference 1a: https://stmarysfetcham.org.uk.
Reference 1b: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_St_Mary,_Fetcham.
Reference 4a: https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2019/april/29/190429-princess-royal-opens-ukho.
Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/heritage-day-two.html.
Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaus_Pevsner. Buried in an English churchyard, in the village where he had a second home. He actually lived in Hampstead.
Reference 7: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/what-are-mmsthash-and-msttexthash.html. This problem cropped up again in the course of this post. And editing it out did not seem to kill it off. Just like duckweed in the pond: clear it away and it pops up again next morning. Maybe cleared this time by copying the plain text to Notepad, clearing the post, logging out and then logging in again.
Group search key: fpa.
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