How stained glass, swimming and strawberry tarts provided much-needed respite from a tumultuous 12 months
Nearly a year ago, on the last day of 2017, my wife and I had walked only a few miles across the South Downs when the rain began to sweep relentlessly across the bare upland, forcing us steeply downhill towards a little settlement called Firle. The pub there was crammed with walkers as soaked as ourselves, who boasted they had never been so wet in all their lives. The rain made us comrades, turning the pub into an idealisation of English decency, so that when we walked onwards to the station at Glynde – the rain now subsiding – we felt in good spirits, which lasted until we reached home through the suburban dusk and learned that Gavin Stamp, a good friend, had died the day before.
Gavin would like Firle, so I’d thought on the train, guessing that he probably knew it already. He knew something about most places, and it was always worth getting in touch with him before travelling anywhere to see what he could tell you. Mainly it was buildings – he was the country’s pre-eminent architectural historian – though his knowledge and opinions never stopped at stone and brick. Many years of writing the Nooks and Corners column in Private Eye gave him a sound knowledge of local politics, and of local corruption, through his campaigns to save good architecture from the wrecker’s ball. He believed that Britain’s postwar destruction of its Victorian heritage amounted to a form of national self-hatred.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2QTAtvM
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