If I Find This Interesting...

...maybe you will too.

Three days in a row of sunshine!!  Drop everything, jump into the car, because in 5 minutes we will be at Coombe having a nice walk with the promise of a hot chocolate too!  It is still cold out!

The area beyond the arches was once a garden which supplied all the vegetables and fruit for Coombe Abbey. The 'kitchen garden' as it was known was created in the mid 1860's and exotic fruits (said to be renowned locally) were grown in hot houses.  Sadly, all that remains today is the outer wall and that area is closed to the public.

This part of Coombe Abbey has since been sold and that area is owned by the farmer next door.  I wonder if I might get permission to have a closer look.  (It's on the list!)  I can see the logic of having a garden's perimeter denoted by a wall but, goodness me, that is some wall.  In the meantime, have look from afar.

Well, that is my world today, participating in Our World Tuesday.   Have a good day, folks!

Year 1605 - Gunpowder, Treason & Plot

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, named after the Gunpowder Plot conspirator, Guy Fawkes.  The plot? To blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I on 5th November, 1605.  Fawkes had the job of guarding gunpowder hidden in the undercroft of the House of Lords.  He was caught!  In the meantime, his fellow conspirators waited in the Old Lion Inn (below), Dunchurch, not far from Coombe Abbey in Coventry.

Known as the Old Lion Inn in 1605.
Guy Fawkes House now and a
residential property.

As you can see from the plaque, Coombe Abbey had a part to play in this story.  (If you go back to my photo for 1st November, I wonder if the scene at Coombe Abbey in 1605 might be something like that.  Ooooooh!)

As for the fate of Guy Fawkes, he was tried and found guilty of High Treason along with 7 others.  For the whole story, look HERE .   

            

Dunchurch, Warwickshire
Road to London to the south and Glasgow to the north.
Main door to Old Lion Inn is in the middle.

Tomorrow, I'll you show you preparations for a village Bonfire Night in Baginton.                                  

A Modest Abode, Hill Wootton, Warwickshire

Blackdown Mill

Hill Wootton can be found just off the main road between Royal Leamington Spa and Kenilworth.  Every time I drive by I am tempted to explore.  Well, now I have.  This enormous Grade II Listed Building has history linking the mill with Coombe Abbey. A historian I am not so I will spare you the injustice of trying to summarise the titbits of information scattered on the web, except to say that this is an 18th Century mill house sitting nicely along side the River Avon and it is now a home.

Too dark to photo thru port cullis to see mill driving cog wheels, etc.

PS.  I may have learned something totally unrelated to
this house but to do with the word 'titbits'.  Now I always thought
that word was 'tidbits'.  Could it  be that 'tid' is a US variation of
the word.  Apparently so....but after living in the UK for nearly 40 years...well, I am surprised.