Broadway Tower

Broadway Tower stands atop Beacon Hill, at 1,024 feet the second highest point in the Cotswolds. It was built as a 'Gothic' folly for Lady Coventry, wife of George William, the 6th Earl of Coventry, one of the great patrons of 18th-century estate landscaping. Completion was circa 1799.

The tower formed part of an overall  plan produced by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown. Brown recruited the architect James Wyatt, who was largely responsible for the design, Brown dying in 1784. Originally called Beacon Tower, the folly stands 65 feet tall. It comprises three storeys plus a rooftop terrace, from which it is possible to see 16 counties. The plan is an unusual one - a hexagon with round towers cut into three of the six angles.

Sir George's son John gave away the tower in 1819 to the neighbouring estate of Middle Hill, then recently inherited by the bibliomaniac Sir Thomas Phillipps. Phillipps moved in his printing press in 1822, to establish the Middle Hill Press, but neglected the structure. The tower was abandoned in 1864 and remained empty until 1872.

William Morris's friend Cormell Price leased it from 1876, and both Morris and Edward Burne-Jones frequented the tower as a retreat. It remained part of the Middle Hill estate until 1949, when it was offered to the National Trust as a gift, one which was declined. The tower was ultimately rescued by Anthony Wills, Baron Dulverton, who used his family's tobacco funds to restore it. With a second staircase inserted in another of the round towers, Broadway Tower opened to the public in 1975.

Adelaide - Mortlock Library

Forming part of the State Library of South Australia, the Mortlock Library, know known as the Mortlock Wing, was opened in 1884 as a library, museum and art gallery. In French Renaissance style, with the mansard roof that epitomises the style, it took five years to build, after a number of earlier false starts. The lower gallery is carried upon masonry columns, the upper upon cantilevered ironwork. Separate buildings were later constructed for the museum and art gallery.

Those Blue Remembered Hills

To be found in Craven Arms, South Shropshire, The Land of Lost Content showcases, over three packed storeys, the popular culture collection of Stella and David Mitchell.

To attempt a description of the collection's tens of thousands of items is impossible. It is an admixture of everything from the past, from Victoriana to everyday things only just starting to disappear; the sort of items that prompt people to say, "My grandma had one of those" or "I had that."

Unlike in a museum, the collection is presented in tableaux, rather than exhibited in cases. The 32 themed displays are works of art in themselves, and many items can be handled. The building is owned by the designer Wayne Hemingway, and leased back to Stella and David for life.

Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, --

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

'There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

'Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

'One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

'The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,-
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.'

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

Thomas Gray, 1751, Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard

Hawarden, Flintshire

William Ewart Gladstone, four-time Prime Minister, was a voracious reader, and collected books from his childhood. Whilst at Christ Church, Oxford, from which he took a double first in Classics and Mathematics, and another first in History, his collection grew apace.

Gladstone’s collection ultimately consisted of 32,000 volumes, of which the Grand Old Man read an incredible 22,000, a book a day, every day, for 60 years. In 1889 a pair of corrugated iron rooms, known as the Tin Tabernacle, was erected to house the library for public use – there is a famous photograph of Gladstone moving books from Hawarden Castle the half mile to their new home, using a wheelbarrow.

When Gladstone died in 1898 a public subscription funded the building in which the residential library is now housed, designed by John Douglas, and opened in 1902. The collection has grown to over 250,000 books, largely theology, history, philosophy, classics and literature.

The library, in front of which is the Gladstone Monument, intended for Dublin but refused by that city’s council, centres the village of Hawarden. For the bad is the House of Correction of the mid-eighteenth century (third photograph); for the good, Hawarden Park, entered via heavy wooden gates.

The World's Best Library

The British Library is second only in scale to the Library of Congress, holding 14 million books and over 150 million items in total, in pretty much all written languages. It is the world's most important research library, with documents dating back to 2000 BC. As foremost of Britain's six legal deposit libraries, it must, by law, be provided with a copy of every British publication. This adds over three million items per year.



Until 1973, the British Library was a department of the British Museum, housed in the famous circular Reading Room (which now forms part of the museum's Great Court). In 1997 the library moved to purpose-built accommodation at St Pancras. This had been 15 years in the building, Prince Charles having laid the foundation stone in 1982 after seven years of planning and wrangling. Contrary to Charles's later rant, Colin St John Wilson's building is both spectacular and gorgeous, and is thus a lovely place to be.



Outside, the dark red brickwork echoes that of the nearby St Pancras Hotel, built by Sir George Gilbert Scott (grandfather to Sir Giles). The large plaza is broken up into various levels and areas, is very pleasant to sit in and admire the sheer quality of the execution, particularly the brickwork, and the pinkish-red metalwork, contrasted with black railings.



The interior is even better. The building is huge in scale - eleven reading rooms, four basement levels, over 200 miles of shelving, a highly efficient mechanical book-handling system, three exhibition galleries - but doesn't overwhelm. The building is centred around the King's Library, 60,000 volumes collected by George III, clearly not so mad after all; and given to the nation by George IV.



This is housed in a glass-walled tower, rising through six storeys, and is beautifully lit. The circulation areas of the library are fantastically generous, lending the building a feeling of openness. These are balanced by a variety of comfortable seating areas, non-reading room study areas, and a couple of quality cafés.

The best place to view it all from is the fifth floor gallery, from which one can look down through the atrium, see the King's Library at its heart and the magnificent main staircase. The detailing, including stair handrails wrapped in soft leather, is exquisite. Yes, it was late and over budget. It is likely, though, the best large public building in Britain for a good few hundred years.

Goering's Balls Not Small After All

The description "important" is massively overused in connection with books, but James Wyllie's Goering and Goering certainly deserves the epithet. The subtitle - Hitler's Henchman and His Anti-Nazi Brother - signals what the book is about; but what comes through only from a full reading is the immense bravery of Albert, who saved hundreds, possibly thousands, from persecution.