The Painted Room

Months ago I booked with the Oxford Preservation Trust for me and my mum to go and see The Painted Room - where Shakespeare is reputed to have stayed on his travels between London and Stratford. He was friends with the owners of the inn who had moved up from London to escape the plague. Godfather to their son in fact. So it is likely he stayed there.
I picked mum up and we headed to the Park & Ride and then to the Covered Market for a cup of tea and a chai latte at Gulp Fiction. It’s Miss E’s favourite cafe in Oxford. A bookshop combined with a cafe - free drink with every book bought. Then we bought Norwegian cheese and went to look at crime books in Blackwells. I wanted to get mum one to take to Mallorca with her next month.
Then it was time for our tour of the Painted Room. It’s very well hidden - on the main shopping street, behind a Georgian facade. The ground floor is a Vodafone shop and you go up a steep staircase, past Betfred on the first floor, and up to the second floor to several surviving rooms from the fourteenth century timber-framed Crown Tavern. One of them has Elizabethan wall paintings dating from the 1580s.
I saw it with Mr K and the Little Misses in 2022 as part of the Oxford Open Doors weekend but it was busy and it was quite a rushed visit. Today was just a small group and a lovely guide who gave us so much interesting information.
The history of the building, the discovery of the painted walls behind wood panelling in 1927, the paint used, the practise of painting walls when you couldn’t afford tapestries, the religious symbolism - overt Protestant stuff and hidden catholic stuff. So good!!!!
After the tour we wandered round for a bit down to the Sheldonian, the Bodleian, and the Bridge of Sighs before heading to the lovely Jericho Cafe for a late lunch. A New York bagel for me with pastrami, gherkins and sauerkraut. Delish!!!
What a lovely day!
Mr O was round after school so as soon as I got home I had to cook dinner for them - chicken just for a change!!! And then take Mr O home at 8pm.
Then I got to sit down for a bit!