Tea at Trianon: Ashington Manor in Somerset

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, April 26, 2026

Ashington Manor in Somerset

A bedroom at Ashington, featuring a yellow sofa and a green four-poster bed

The sitting room, featuring a fireplace, and lots of furniture dressed in floral fabrics

From Country Life:

There are many things to note about Ashington Manor in Somerset, not least that, in the 16th century, it was the home of Ursula St Barbe, wife of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s chief fixer, whose machinations precipitated the gruesome end of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Although she primped it up with a fancy new façade and oriel windows, it had mixed fortunes in the following centuries until it was stumbled upon by Isabel and Julian Bannerman. The couple are makers of magical gardens, who have cast their spell for The King, Sting and Trudie Styler, Jasper Conran and Keith Tyson, as well as further afield, including in Lower Manhattan, New York, where a garden they designed commemorates the British and Commonwealth victims of the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001. However, what is remarkable on a crisp morning beneath the mullioned windows of Ashington’s double-height great hall is that it is almost toastily warm, in a way that could never be achieved by even the most generously proportioned hearth.
Most people who spend time in leaky, historic piles resign themselves to the fact that if they want to enjoy the heady smell of old oak, the texture of worn stone and the gentle creak of mortise and tenon joints tapped together three or four centuries ago, the price they must pay is wearing thick socks and a gilet all day (and night). They cling to the Aga like a limpet and feel pathetically grateful when handed a hot-water bottle or find, to their delight, that someone has remembered to flick the switch on one of the world’s least expensive luxuries — an electric blanket. (Read more.)

A bathroom with a vintage bathtub and shower. There is also a chair