Joanna has been travelling…

Last week, I was in Scotland visiting family. We spent three days visiting old haunts, the first of which was Culzean Castle. And the sun shone, as you can see above. It was glorious. (For those who haven’t been there, Culzean is on the Ayrshire coast, near Maybole, and it’s pronounced Cullane. It has other interesting pronunciation quirks, too, which I’ll come to.)

Those of you who are devotees of Fred Dibnah may have seen his programme about Culzean. He was interested in the exterior stonework and in the masons who are employed there nowadays to ensure that the walls etc stay up. And he was very complimentary about Culzean’s neoclassical architect Robert Adam. Adam didn’t just design buildings, but interiors and furniture as well, as you’ll see from some of the images in this blog.

The pride of Adam’s architecture at Culzean is the grand oval staircase. And, yes, that is a portrait of a familiar figure you can see peeping out between the classical columns. For your delectation, here’s a closer shot of that portrait.

Recognise him? Thought you would.

Napoleon gets everywhere, doesn’t he?

Culzean Castle interiors

Robert Adam was responsible for the rebuilding of Culzean to a new plan, between 1777 and 1792. The landowner who commissioned the work was a leading member of the Kennedy Clan, the 10th Earl of Cassilis. (That’s pronounced Castles. Sorry, but I did warn you.) It was to be the seat of his earldom. And a very impressive seat it is, too.

Inside one of the grand reception rooms, there are two fine paintings of the castle by Alexander Nasmyth, showing how it looked in 1816. [Click to enlarge.] The one on the left is “Culzean Castle from the North with Alisa Craig”; the second one is simply “Culzean Castle from the Sea.” One of my family said she would have loved to own these. I suspect many visitors would.
Me included.

The Adam style is neoclassical and, I’d say, very appealing with its simple lines and delicate use of colour. Here are a couple of the Culzean ceilings, for example:

And of course there are Adam fireplaces in every room. One shown here is very grand. The second is in the lady’s dressing room, so slightly more restrained. I loved the dressing table. If you look closely behind the mirror, you can see all the separate cubbyholes for the lady’s cosmetics, or jewels, or ribbons, or whatever else she stored there. The whole thing folds up very neatly, too.

Castle grounds

When I was a child, Culzean was often where we went for family outings. My father would indulge his hobby of photography. Black and white only. My mother, a keen gardener, would wander the gardens. They are splendid, partly because the castle is so near the coast that it has a mild climate. I remember those huge palm trees very well. I can’t say I remember ever seeing the gardeners using a big tractor like that one, though.The walled garden at Culzean is still splendid, as you can see below. Even in September, there was lots of colour. Sadly, we couldn’t go round all of it because the gravel paths weren’t great for the wheelchair which one of our party was using. But we loved the bits we did see.

On our visit, we especially loved the willow gardener, sited among a blowsy bed of flowers. He really looks alive (and working), doesn’t he? Such amazing skill by the willow artist.

There was an onion too, big enough to hide in, though my pic is sadly out of focus. (Sorry about that.)

But wait, there’s more willow work to come.

Later…

Back in the day, my sister and I would explore the grounds. They were great for hide and seek.

I particularly loved going down to the beach. It’s pebbly, not sandy, but there was rarely anyone on it except me and so I felt it was my special, secret place.

I don’t remember ever noticing the building with the chimney. I think it produced gas for the castle. But I was more interested in dashing down to the beach and creating my own stories about what went on there.

Budding author? Who knew?

Upstairs, downstairs?

What you’ve seen above is the grandeur of the castle for the Earl of Cassilis and his guests. (He was a lifelong bachelor.) I couldn’t resist the consumption book below, opened at a page for the week of 30th December, 1893 (or it might be 1890). It looks as if the castle had a lot of guests over Christmas. In fact, there were 7 guests and 14 servants plus one casual visitor. Over the week, those 21 or 22 people consumed, among other things:

• • • beef 96 lbs
    • mutton 87 lbs
    • turkeys 5
    • geese 5
    • ducks 4
    • partridge 6
    • rabbits 16
    • bread 82 loaves
    • cream 13½ pints (including in kitchen)
    • butter 32 pounds (including in kitchen)
    • eggs 171 (including in kitchen)

Those 14 servants will have worked hard to keep the castle ticking over. It’s possible to visit the kitchens, with the huge spits for roasts and the classic long deal table down the middle. Imagine having to polish all those copper pans!

Unusually for an 18th century house, the kitchens are not in some dark basement. There are lots of windows and lots of light (though the picture above doesn’t show it well).

There are also rules about what servants might and might not do, including:

#5    No singing or whistling
#8    Never using the main stair or gallery except to clean them
#9    No talking to fellow servants while working
#10  No walking in the gardens while the family is at home

If you click on the image, you can read the rest. I’d say the list is not unusual for a grand house. Servants were not to be seen and not to be heard, essentially. Even worse than children?

But I promised you more willow…

Culzean Castle has a Swan Lake, sort of

Swan Pond (not actually a Swan Lake) is enormous. It’s over a mile to walk round but it was too difficult with the wheelchair. We stuck to the easy part of it. And we didn’t see a single swan.

But we did see Nessie, with seagull attendants. Which accounts for why fellow hivie Sarah did not see the monster when she toured Loch Ness recently. Nessie was on her holidays, down at Culzean Castle.

Joanna

Surely that’s Nessie not Joanna? Or maybe Joanna’s had a makeover?

PS re cutting a MS

In case you’re wondering, I did work on the cuts to my manuscript every day while I was in Scotland. It took me a total of 21 days to identify nearly 20,000 words of potential cuts. Then another 2 whole days to ensure that the shortened text still flowed OK. I finished it all on Friday 27 September, just before writing this blog. And Eureka! My MS of 102,600 words is now a mere 83,600. I call that a result, don’t you?

PPS More on Culzean?

If you’re interested, there’s a YouTube video by the National Trust for Scotland on Culzean below. It shows some of the interiors and also some fabulous aerial views of the castle and its country park. And the head guide has written about what he calls The Great Eight of Culzean, too. Definitely worth a read. Enjoy them both.