BLAKENEY—A CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE
CHAPTER XII
A PRIORY—GREAT HOUSES AND THE FENS
Troubles over—Road viâ Lower Sheringham, Salthouse, Cley-next-Sea, Blakeney, Stiffkey and Wells-next-Sea—Impressive desolation—Wells—Binham—The building and making of Holkham—"Coke of Norfolk"—The Cokes—Walsingham—Remains and history—The Shrine—Ecclesiastical trickery and temporal gain—Froude quoted—Ceremonial at the shrine—Its miraculous transportation—Houghton—The Walpoles—Sir Robert's pictures—Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill—The mad Lord Orford—His ruling passion—Stag "four-in-hand"—The hounds pursue—Motor-cars many in these parts—Fakenham—Lynn—Glanced at in the rain—The Fens—Kinship of the Useful and the Romantic—The beauty of the Fens actually, and enhanced by imagination—The great reclaimers—Resistance of the old Fenmen—Charles Kingsley quoted—"The inspiration of God"—To Ely and Cambridge—The "Bull" unready—Homeward bound and a narrow escape—Motor-cyclist towing a girl on a bicycle—A wicked practice—Value of care in motorist.
From this point we never looked back, as the saying goes, mechanically. Our troubles were over, and we looked forward to our drive along the north coast of Norfolk with intense eagerness. It is a pleasure in retrospect now, but it was not quite the same sort of pleasure as had been anticipated in previous topographical innocence. The road we had taken designedly on leaving Cromer, when it was determined to follow the sea as closely as possible, left Felbrigg and Sheringham, justly beloved of artists, on one side, passed through Lower Sheringham, Weybourne, Salthouse, Cley-next-Sea, Blakeney, and Stiffkey to Wells-next-Sea. They were not in themselves particularly interesting villages, although I remember that at one of them—I think it was Weybourne—to which the road winds inwards from the sea a little, and where there is some shelter of a hill from the salt winds, there were fine trees about the church, and another little church, on the left-hand side of the road at Blakeney, had one full-sized tower at the west end and another funny little tower at the east end. The prevailing impression left by the whole drive is of impressive desolation. The road, dead flat for the most part, but not half bad in point of surface, runs as close to the sea as its makers dared to lay it. On the right, as one journeys westward, are wide stretches, half sea and half marsh; on the left is a range of low hills. Sometimes it is close at hand, at others it recedes a little, and the space between the road and the hills is again a species of half marsh. The streams, running parallel to the road often, have a look of being partly tidal. The sides of the road are guarded by a fence, the bottom part of which clearly shows that at spring tides, especially if they be aggravated by the wind, the sea must flow over the road also; else whence came that fringe of withered seaweed hanging round the bottom of the fence? Small wonder that the folk in these parts have preserved, in Cley-next-Sea and in Wells-next-Sea, the reminder that the sea is close at hand. It is with them always, threatening them, devouring their land, strewing their flat shore with wreckage. From Cley for some miles to the westward extends a bill of sandy land, not very high, enclosing a long lagoon, apparently very shallow, and the outlook over this lagoon, with the dreary ridge of land broken, if memory serves correctly, only by a lighthouse, is intensely and absolutely characteristic. One feels no sort of desire to see it again unless indeed it is, as by its appearance it well might be, a haunt of wildfowl worth shooting; but at the same time it is good to have seen it once in order to know what this scenery of the most remote and northerly district of Norfolk is like, and to realize the kind of life which its scanty population must lead. They live face to face with Nature in her sourest mood, Nature never majestic, except when the storms come from the northward, smiling but a hard smile when the sun shines. In fact, this is a stretch of land, when it is worthy of the name, dismal as the mind of man can conceive.
When you get to Wells-next-Sea, where the houses are plain but of some age, and there is a little port on a winding creek, the aspect of the country changes for the better; or rather it so changed for us, because we determined to give the coast up and to take the inland road viâ Fakenham and Flitcham for King's Lynn. For this route there was ample reason close at hand, in Holkham Hall, Walsingham, Binham Abbey, and Houghton, about all of which a good deal must needs be said with as little tedium, be it hoped, as possible. Before saying it, however, it may be as well to state that in another chapter, and that the last, King's Lynn will be treated as an imaginary centre for many little drives. Imagination, since it has happened to me often to stay at Lynn for many days together and to explore the surrounding country and roads, will not be severely taxed, and the method is adopted for the convenience of writer and reader. In this chapter we have before us the historic houses just named and, after them, the Fens from Lynn to Cambridge. These last we drive through in the early afternoon, taking in the character of them better than on any previous occasion. So the material for this chapter is at least ample. If we added to it Castle Rising, the birthplace of Nelson, the Sandringham country, divine in its kind, Hunstanton, Brancaster, and King's Lynn last of all, the chapter must run to unwieldly and intolerable length.
At Binham we have part of the Benedictine abbey, enveloped in ivy and part still used as a church, a very fine piece of unspoiled Norman work. For Holkham, Abbeys, Castles and Ancient Halls, by Mr. John Timbs and Mr. Alexander Gunn, is a treasure-house of information. Holkham is Hœligham, "Holy Home," and it was the work of the famous Kent under the direction of Thomas Coke, Lord Leicester, who himself spent many years in Italy studying the works of Palladio. "Coke of Norfolk," as the Lord Leicester of George II's time was called, was emphatically a landowner who deserved to be magnificently housed. An inscription over the entrance to the Great Hall records the fact that "this seat, on an open, barren estate, was planned, planted, built, decorated and inhabited in the middle of the eighteenth century by Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester." It naturally does not record the fact that the barren estate, for such it was, is now, mainly by virtue of Coke of Norfolk's sagacity in planting, one of the most nobly timbered to be found anywhere in the kingdom and a perfect paradise for game first and for those who shoot game later. In one respect the great Lord Coke's plans were changed, one might almost write providentially. It had been intended to build the outside of the Hall of Bath stone, but an earth was found in a neighbouring parish which produced bricks of much the same colour as Bath stone, but heavier and closer in texture. That was as it should be. Coke of Norfolk had bought much of the land and, by enclosing, cultivating and planting, had practically made it. It was part of the fitness of things that a "mansion of almost peerless magnificence, as far as its noble proportions, its gorgeous decorations, and its art and literary treasures" were concerned, should be built out of bricks baked out of Norfolk earth. The Hall stands in a spacious but level park, and a glimpse of it may be had from the road. In the middle is a great quadrangular block having, at each angle, a wing, 70 ft. by 60 ft., connected with the central block by a corridor. The wings are: the stranger's wing, the family wing, the chapel wing, and the kitchen wing. The library and the MSS. rooms are in the family wing; the gallery of statues and the state apartments are in the central block. This is 114 ft. by 62 ft., its most noble feature being the hall, suggested to Lord Leicester by Palladio's plan for a Court of Justice, and having a gallery round three sides of it. Of the pictures the most notable are Claude's Apollo and Marsyas in a landscape, and other landscapes, Vandykes, Poussins, a Raphael, and a Rubens. There is also a group of nineteen figures by Michael Angelo. The manuscripts are of great value and curiosity, and contain, amongst other things, the papers of the great Chief Justice. In fact, Holkham is, in itself, for its contents, and for the story of its creation, one of the most wonderful places in this marvellous England of ours; and that is why so much is here written concerning it in a book whose author is not at all eager to pry into the houses of other and greater men.