Remembering Gillian

We went to the funeral today of Rob's cousin, Gillian, who died before Christmas.  We were pleased to be back from our little trip so that we could go. We were even more pleased that Rob's brother transported us there and back so we could succumb to the jet lag.

Gillian was a lovely person who trained as a needlework and domestic science teacher and spent much of her teaching career working in boarding schools as a house mistress.  She was a very refined lady with a lovely sense of humour and we were always guaranteed a very warm welcome and delicious cake when we popped in to see her.  She loved picnics, so the wake today took the form of an indoors picnic with wicker baskets on the tables with sandwiches and cakes.  I think she would have approved.

The service and burial were at the church in the grounds of Kelham Hall near Newark.  Gillian attended the church of St Wilfred's there and, interestingly, her father did some of his training for the priesthood at the theological college which was at Kelham Hall in the 1940s.

Kelham Hall is a very strange building and there are plans to make it into a luxury hotel and spa.  I had a wander around and was intrigued by the architecture and particularly the atmosphere in the grand room which used to be the space where the monks worshipped.  It was enormous.  You can see some of its proportions in the extra.  The main blip shows the courtyard room and I hope you will be able to make out some of the work of the architect Gilbert Scott in there.

The third and present Kelham Hall "is considered a masterpiece of high Victorian Gothic architecture, entirely asymmetrical, with a gloriously irregular skyline, and crowning 'grandiloquent' towers."[8] It was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and completed in 1863. Not long after the fire, "a new Kelham Hall, of magnificent proportions, and of an architectural beauty far superior to that possessed by its predecessors, either at Kelham or Averham was erected in the Italian style... and is justly said to be one of (Scott's)...most successful works."[9] In 1865 Gilbert Scott reused many of the design details of Kelham Hall on a much larger scale for the façade of the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras railway station in London, completed in 1876.

The Manners-Sutton family then ran into financial difficulties and the Hall was sold to the Society of the Sacred Mission in 1903 and run as a theological college. It was occupied by military forces during World War I. The Great Chapel "was dedicated in 1928 and was a masterpiece. It was almost square with a great central dome, (62 feet across and 68 feet (21 m) high), the second largest concrete dome in England. A few visitors said it reminded them of Stonehenge – massive, austere and mysterious."
(Wikipedia)