In This Chapter Chapter 1 Discovering the Best of England Discovering London and England s most fascinating towns and villages Exploring England s unrivaled collection of castles, palaces, cathedrals, and churches Experiencing the great historic landmarks of England Enjoying glorious gardens and the English countryside Going shopping in London and beyond England claims a special place in the hearts and minds of many people. English speakers (and readers) in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand often feel a kinship with the land of their mother tongue. England shares many cultural ties and hundreds of place names with those countries. So for some people, a trip to England is like going home. The country s great age, and the sheer weight of its history, can induce a sense of awe and wonder. England is a land of ancient cities, royal palaces, massive cathedrals, and legendary sites. You can see the layers of its long history everywhere you look. And travelers can enjoy the country in so many different ways. Mighty castles, stately homes, glorious gardens, and picturesque villages enhance the countryside s natural beauty. The cooking is unique, and so is the English pub. This chapter serves as an at-a-glance reference to the absolute best the best of the best that England has to offer. In the categories that I outline, you can find some of the things that make traveling in England so much fun and so endlessly fascinating. I discuss each of these places in detail later in this book; you can find them in their indicated chapters, marked with the Best of the Best icon that accompanies this paragraph. COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL The Best of Legendary London London is one of the world s great cities, and I give it plenty of coverage in this book because almost every visitor to England heads here first.
10 Part I: Introducing England London is exciting, historic, cultured, cutting-edge, and romantic. See Chapters 11 and 12 for more about these highlights: London is where you can visit truly world-class museums. The British Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate Modern, the Tate Britain, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Natural History Museum to name the best known display a mind-boggling array of artwork and unique treasures. The Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace are just three of the famous historic places you can visit. Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Green Park, and St. James s Park form a vast network of green space shared by Londoners and visitors to the capital of the United Kingdom. London s dining scene is phenomenal, and the entertainment choices theater, music, dance, opera, film are almost limitless. The shopping opportunities are endless, too. The Best Cities, Towns, and Villages England isn t that large, so you can base yourself in London and take day trips to many historic cities and towns in other parts of the country. Or you can make them part of an itinerary that showcases the country s best cities. One of the most elegant of English cities is the former spa town of Bath, with its amazing Georgian crescents (row houses built in a long curving line) and 18th-century architecture (see Chapter 20). Oxford and Cambridge are famous university towns where centuries-old colleges cluster around quadrangles (see Chapter 13). For some laid-back fun beside the seaside, you can visit Brighton, on the south coast (see Chapter 14), or head up north to Scarborough, on the North Sea in Yorkshire (see Chapter 21). Cornwall (see Chapter 18) has several picturesque towns, many of them former fishing villages with colorful histories of smuggling and pirates: Penzance is the largest, but you also find St. Ives, an artists colony with a beautiful beach; Mousehole; and Fowey. Rye, in Sussex, is one of the best preserved and most attractive towns in England, full of Elizabethan homes and buildings (see Chapter 14). York, two hours north of London by train, is still surrounded by its medieval walls; has narrow, medieval lanes; and is home to York Minster, one of the largest churches in the world (see Chapter 21). The scenic Cotswolds region is dotted with charming, honey-colored stone villages Broadway, Bourton-on-the-Water, Chipping
Chapter 1: Discovering the Best of England 11 Campden, and Cirencester that all grew rich on wool during the Middle Ages (see Chapter 20). In the Lake District, a scenically splendid area in northwest England, you find picturesque villages, such as Grasmere, and lakeside towns, such as Keswick, in stunning countryside (see Chapter 22). The Best Castles, Palaces, and Stately Homes Step into one of England s castles, palaces, or stately homes, and all you can do is marvel at the way people used to live. Some people, I should say, because these enormous estates belonged to an elite minority with royal connections or private fortunes. Usually set amid spectacular grounds, these places are treasure troves of history and art, packed with rare paintings and beautiful furniture. In London, you can visit Buckingham Palace, the queen s official residence, and Kensington Palace, once the home of Princess Diana. Henry VIII s Hampton Court Palace is a short train ride from London, as is 900-year-old Windsor Castle, another official residence of Queen Elizabeth II. Chapter 12 has more about Buckingham and Kensington palaces, and Chapter 13 has the details about Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle. Knole, which has 365 rooms (some with their original 17th-century furnishings), and moated Hever Castle, birthplace of Anne Boleyn, are just two of the many castles and stately homes you can visit in Kent (see Chapter 15). One of the most dramatically sited castles in England is St. Michael s Mount, on its own rocky island in Mount s Bay, Penzance (see Chapter 18). Castle Drogo (see Chapter 17), in nearby Dartmoor National Park, is the last private castle to be built in England (it was completed in 1930). Blenheim Palace (see Chapter 13), near Oxford, was the palatial childhood home of Winston Churchill, who later moved to Chartwell, a house in Kent that is filled with Churchill memorabilia (see Chapter 15). Farther north, just a few miles from Stratford-upon-Avon, is mighty Warwick Castle, surrounded by thick stone walls and towers. The wax artisans at Madame Tussauds have peopled the castle with its former owners and some of their famous guests (see Chapter 19). Castle Howard, in Yorkshire, is one of the most beautiful stately homes in England, an enormous domed wonder set amidst landscaped grounds with classically inspired buildings (see Chapter 21).
12 Part I: Introducing England The Best Cathedrals and Churches England s mighty cathedrals, still in use 800 plus years after they were built, dominate the heart of England s cities. Their stupendous size never fails to impress, and some of their architectural details are stunning. I include several of my favorite cathedrals and churches in this book: English monarchs have been crowned in London s Westminster Abbey since the time of William the Conqueror. St. Paul s Cathedral is the masterpiece of Sir Christopher Wren, who rebuilt London after the Great Fire of 1666 (see Chapter 12). Chaucer s pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales were headed toward Canterbury Cathedral, and tourists still flock there in droves (see Chapter 14). The west front of Exeter Cathedral is remarkable for its rows of sculptured saints and kings, the largest surviving array of 14thcentury sculpture in England (see Chapter 17). Massive York Minster, the largest Gothic building in northern Europe, contains more medieval stained glass than any other cathedral in England (see Chapter 21). Wells, England s smallest cathedral town, is dominated by beautiful Wells Cathedral with its unique transverse arches (see Chapter 20). The Best Historic Places England markets its history big time, and with good reason: Its recorded history stretches back some 2,000 years, to a time when Latin-speaking Roman soldiers built forts, roads, and temples from Kent to Northumberland. But England was inhabited for thousands of years before the Romans arrived. No soap opera can beat the stories associated with England s most famous historic sites. The great historical landmarks of England stir the imagination because they ve witnessed so much from glorious triumphs to bloody tragedies. When you visit the Tower of London, you walk on a piece of ground where the great dramas and terrors of a turbulent kingdom were played out, where Elizabeth I was held captive while still a princess, and where Sir Thomas More and Anne Boleyn were beheaded (see Chapter 12). In southern England, at a place called Battle, you can walk around the battlefield where in 1066 William of Normandy defeated Harold, the Saxon king of England. The battle changed the course of English history (see Chapter 14). Long-vanished peoples erected mysterious monuments that still fill the country. The most famous is Stonehenge, a massive stone circle
Chapter 1: Discovering the Best of England 13 on the plains of Wiltshire (see Chapter 16). In Cornwall, you can visit other tantalizing prehistoric sites, including Chysauster, the remains of an Iron Age village (see Chapter 18). In northern England, up in the Lake District, Castlerigg Stone Circle, near Keswick, is another enigmatic reminder of early human presence in England (see Chapter 22). The Best Gardens In England, gardening has been raised to an art form. Chalk it up to a temperate climate (especially in the southeast and southwest) that can support all kinds of rare and exotic plant species, including azaleas and rhododendrons. I include several great English gardens in this book because gardens are a growing (pardon the pun) interest for visitors from around the globe. The gardens usually surround a stately home or castle that you can also visit. Perhaps the most famous garden in England is at Sissinghurst Castle, in Kent (see Chapter 15). The plantings there, and at equally beautiful Hidcote Manor, in Gloucestershire, form living rooms of shape, color, scent, and texture (see Chapter 20). Stourhead, in Wiltshire, was laid out in 1741 and is one of the oldest landscape gardens in England (see Chapter 16). In Cornwall, Cotehele and Lanhydrock are estates known for their superb riverside gardens. Cornwall is also the site of England s newest garden, a massive world-environment learning center called the Eden Project (see Chapter 18). You can find immaculately landscaped grounds, where every shrub and blade of grass is clipped to perfection, at Hever Castle, in Kent (see Chapter 15); Warwick Castle, near Stratford-upon- Avon (see Chapter 19); and Castle Howard, up north in Yorkshire (see Chapter 21). Closer to London, you find historic gardens at Hampton Court Palace and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (see Chapter 13). The Best Romantic Landscapes England has been settled for thousands of years, and truly wild places are rare in this densely populated country where over 46 million people inhabit 50,357 square miles of land. Yet travelers always comment on the countryside s beauty, a domesticated blend of farms, enclosed fields, and small villages that seem to snooze under a blanket of history. The way humans have interacted with the environment for thousands of years leaving behind grand monuments, such as Stonehenge, humble country churches, thatched cottages, and hedgerows contributes to the enduring charm of the English countryside. Many visitors respond to the sense of human continuity evoked by the following landscapes:
14 Part I: Introducing England If you explore Cornwall, you encounter rocky coastal headlands, windswept moors, and Celtic crosses left by Irish missionaries 14 centuries ago (see Chapter 18). Touring the Cotswolds, you see picturesque villages of honeycolored stone that date back to the Middle Ages interspersed with lightly forested valleys and high open fields where sheep graze as they ve done for a thousand years (see Chapter 20). Luckily, the country s wildest and most unique landscapes are protected as national parks, limiting commercial development and opening the countryside to walkers, thus preserving the regions essential character. Places like Dartmoor National Park in Devon (see Chapter 17), North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales national parks in Yorkshire (see Chapter 21), and Lake District National Park in semi-remote Cumbria (see Chapter 22) are all great places for you to experience the most romantic landscapes of England. The Best Shopping London is one of the world s greatest shopping cities, and my credit cards aren t doing all the talking. From mighty Harrods to the super-chic boutiques of Bond Street, from the 200-year-old shops on Jermyn Street to the wonderland of bookstores on Charing Cross Road, London offers a seemingly endless array of goods and goodies. Custom-made shirts, hand-tooled leather shoes, high-quality woolens in London, you can still find such things. You can hunt for an old engraving, paw through bric-a-brac at an outdoor market stall, or wander through the London silver vaults in your quest for a Georgian soup ladle. Go to Chapter 12 for the shopping details. Nowhere else in the country can match London s abundance of shopping opportunities. Outside the capital, however, small shops and oneof-a-kind places draw the shopper s eye: Antiquarian bookstores abound in Cambridge and Oxford (see Chapter 13). Exeter is a good place to look for silver (see Chapter 17). The Cotswolds has more antique stores than anywhere else in England (see Chapter 20). Many areas of the country feature locally made handicrafts. Look for pottery in Devon, Cornwall, and the Lake District (see Chapters 17, 18, and 22, respectively). You may also stumble across some treasure at a rural car-boot (trunk) sale or jumble (rummage) sale. At these informal sales in schools or church buildings or parking lots, you can buy secondhand odds and ends. And of course, every major historic attraction in England from Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent to Castle Howard in Yorkshire has a gift shop.