A Bit About Britain is delighted to welcome author April Munday, as a guest writer introducing us to Fiddleford Manor. Fiddleford Manor, such a great name, is a small manor house in North Dorset. It’s one of those places that…
Ten of the best in the west
South West England has two main draw-backs: it is popular and, as it’s on the west, it can suffer from wetness – particularly at its extremities. Other than that, it has pretty much everything, including mystery, prehistory, history, cuteness, grand…
Coleridge’s Cottage
We went to see Coleridge’s Cottage because it was there. Apart from driving through Bridgwater it wasn’t a painful experience, though I can’t say it was particularly exciting either. However, it does have what the National Trust accurately describes as…
Sedgemoor, 1685
I had it in my head to visit the site of the Battle of Sedgemoor. There’s something about battlefields that I find morbidly fascinating. Partly, of course, battles are often nodal points in our story, and they therefore need to…
St Cyriac and the tour party
Had I led a better life, perhaps spending more time with saints than sinners, maybe I would have heard of St Cyriac before stumbling ignorantly into his church in Lacock. For the benefit of anyone else who has somehow managed…
Through cloisters and gardens – a visit to Lacock Abbey
For some, Lacock Abbey will always be associated with the invention of photography; for others, it is the Tudor-Gothic-Victorian house that gets the juices flowing; for me, the real pleasure was in wandering through cloisters and gardens. It was September…
Is the Cerne Abbas Giant one of Britain’s most loved figures?
This is an appropriate question, since it is rumoured that couples creep up to the Cerne Abbas Giant at night in order to make babies. As the Giant is cut into a hill with a reasonable degree of slope on…
Lawrence of Arabia’s bolt-hole
A tiny cottage, close to the Dorset HQ of the Royal Tank Regiment at Bovington Camp, was once owned by one of Britain’s most fascinating and enigmatic figures, T E Lawrence – also known as Lawrence of Arabia. The cottage…
Was England born in Athelney?
Christmas in the year 877 did not turn out as Alfred planned. One minute he was celebrating, the next his hall was overrun by screaming, violent, bloody-weaponed, pagan warriors. He escaped with his life and a small band of followers,…
A visit to the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm Museum
The Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm Museum is situated, with startling logic, twenty miles or more from the sea. It is a massive place and, if you haven’t already guessed, it tells the story of the Royal Navy in the…
The Chalice Well
The water flows red from a natural spring at the foot of Chalice Hill in Glastonbury. It is said to be infused with, or at the very least represent, the blood of Christ: or maybe it was rusty nails from…
Barrington Court: bring on the empty mansion
From the moment we stepped into its kitchen garden, everything about Barrington Court made me want to linger. But don’t visit to savour the great moments that took place at this beguiling Somerset estate, because, so far as I know,…
Between Golden Cap and Charmouth
We wanted to walk along Dorset’s Jurassic Coast and hunt for fossils. No, that’s not quite right: I wanted to walk along the Jurassic Coast and hunt for fossils; Head Office wanted to find a sun-drenched beach to lie on. …
The enigma of Silbury Hill
Silbury Hill is so regular in shape, so obviously artificial; yet it is large enough to be a natural feature. It stands some 130 feet (39.6 metres) high with a circumference at its base of about 1,640 feet (500 metres)…