Spikey Speke and Sleeping In

Day Twenty-four – Liverpool

After such a big day yesterday we were all pretty knackered this morning. The kids were up first at around 8:30am, me next at 9:30am and Jenni (finally) at 10:30am. None of us moved very fast even then and spent the morning blogging, reading and schlepping around our new abode.

The new house is magic. Room for 9(!) adults and three floors. Both kids have their own bedrooms with double beds and have spent the night spread out like starfish. I suspect going back to single beds in the same room on Saturday will be a bit of a rude shock ;-)

After lunch we made ourselves presentable and headed off to Speke Hall. The weather was actually pleasant and the sun was out which was a very nice surprise. The drive took about 20 minutes and we managed to find fuel (without a massive queue at last) along the way.

Speke Hall is another of the "been there, done that before" visits for me but apart from the outside I remember very little. The house is a wonderfully preserved Tudor manor with all the usual half-timbered trimmings, currently painted black and white as the Victorians often did. It was initially built by a devout Catholic family around the time Henry VIII was going about persecuting people of that faith and contains a number of nooks, hidden rooms and sopy holes intended to help the occupants avoid capture. The house is built around a courtyard which contains a pair of enormous yew trees, known as Adam and Eve which stood on the site before the house was built. Over several generations the house was added to until the courtyard was completely enclosed.

You can't take photos inside which is unfortunate because there is some amazing furniture for starters. Any pics of the interior in this entry are from the Speke Hall website and copyright belongs to them. The Great Hall contains a massive fireplace, over which is a very tidy set of Tudor plate armour and a pair of 6 foot swiehanders, a dozen or so polearms of various flavours and and a few swords. There is also a life-sized picture of a previous Elizabethan occupant who was 9'6" tall.

As a kid I was told one of the bedrooms was haunted, a previous occupant supposedly having thrown her baby into the moat and then killed herself but this is apparently complete guff.

The grounds contain some of the "nastiest" hedges in Britain, 6 feet tall and composed entirely of holly. They are very attractive but caused comments like "death by hedge" to be made.

After touring the house we walked round the gardens for a while and took some more snaps of the exterior from various angles. The kids had a quick romp in the adventure playground, now devoid of school kids, while Jenni and I bought more Kendal Mint Cake, cunningly disguised from smaller folks by the National Trust wrapping. Mwahahahahaha...

On the way back home the weather closed in again and it was raining lightly by the time we got back. Guess what? As I type this around 6:30pm it's effing bucketing down with rain. Again!

Tomorrow we're heading down to the Albert Docks and might have a look at the Maritime Museum for starters. One more day til the stadium tour at Anfield. Woohoo!

Cheers,

Millsy