Past Visits
Past Visits
The Windsor & Eton Society AFTERNOON visit to
RUNNYMEDE MEMORIAL
Wednesday 9th July 2025
This is a one hour personally guided tour of the RAF Memorial at Runnymede.
Members make their own way to Runnymede, arriving by 1.50pm.
The tour is booked for 2.00pm. We can take 20 members.
There is no fixed charge for this tour but they request a donation.
I am not asking for payment in advance but I would like every member to pay me £5 on the day and I will then make the relevant donation from The Windsor and Eton Society.
For your information this is their guidance.
“Please note that our volunteer speakers are not able to accept cash donations or a cheque made out to them personally. If you are not able to make a donation by cheque to CWGF or use our online facilities then please email us”.
Application
Please email me, Anne Taylor, directly at taylorad22@btinternet.com
- give your name(s)
- contact phone number
- state that you want to visit the Runnymede Memorial
There will not be a ticket but I will let you know by email if you have a reserved place for this visit.
Note
Some of you will have heard Graham Grist talk to The Society during last year’s programme of talks. We were expecting him to talk about the Runnymede Memorial but he side tracked and this was not the main substance of his talk.
Afterwards, he suggested that he could give a guided tour of the memorial for members. Hence, this afternoon outing.
Lancing College Chapel and
St Mary’s House and Garden,Bramber,
W.Sussex
WEDNESDAY, 27th AUGUST 2025
https://www.lancingcollege.co.uk/chapel https://stmarysbramber.co.uk/
8.45am Departure from Alma Road Coach Park –Please ensure you are there by 8.35am so we can leave on time.
11.15 Arrive Lancing College Chapel – guided talk/ tour
12.15 Leave Lancing
12.45 Arrive St Mary’s, Bramber. Group light lunch in tea room
Guided tours of house. View gardens. Tea /cake
4.00pm Departure 6.00pm Alma Road Car Park
Apart from departures, these times are approximate.
Lancing College Chapel– This was founded in 1868 and dedicated in 1911. It is a stunning example of Gothic revival and has a nave reaching over 90ft to the apex of the vault. The Rose Window has over 30,000 pieces of stained glass, has a 32ft diameter and is one of the largest in England.
St Mary’s House and Garden – The house was built c1470, on 12th Century Knights Templar land. It started out as an historic pilgrim inn. The main house includes fine panelled rooms including the unique Elizabethan trompe l’oeil Painted Room and a wonderful Victorian music room. There are five acres of beautiful gardens. For over 40 years Peter Thorogood and Roger Linton, who saved the house in 1984, have done extensive works to restore and enhance the estate. Peter & Roger, at 97 & 85 respectively, are still working tirelessly and you may well meet them during our visit.
Stratfield Saye – September 4th 2024
It was a fine day when 40 members visited Stratfield Saye – the home of the Dukes of Wellington. We were their last visitors for the 2024 season and experienced a very interesting day with guided tours round the house and to the amazing funeral carriage which carried his coffin through the streets of London (you can see the height in the above photograph). We were also well fed and watered. It was another excellent day out.
Beaulieu Village, Hampshire
Tuesday 11th June 2024
Located on the southeastern edge of the New Forest in Hampshire, England. It is home to both Palace House and the National Motor Museum. In 2020, it was named the fifth most beautiful village in the UK and Ireland by Condé Nast Traveler.
The name “Beaulieu” comes from the French beau lieu, which means “beautiful place”. It is derived from Beaulieu Abbey, which was populated by 30 monks sent from the French abbey of Cîteaux, the mother house of the Cistercian order.
There is so much to do and see at Beaulieu – the old palace ruins, Palace House with a display of embroidery, lovely grounds bordering the River Beaulieu, the National Motor Museum and more. Follow this link to see more https://www.beaulieu.co.uk/days-out-beaulieu/
This trip will probably leave Alma Road car park at about 8.30. There will be a brief comfort stop en route. On arrival at Beaulieu, members will then be left to visit the various attractions etc. as they wish. There will not be organised coffee and lunch.
Application forms will be sent to members by email after Easter.
Watts Gallery
Chapel & Artists’ Village GU3 1DQ
Tuesday 26 March 2024
https://www.wattsgallery.org.uk/
The Windsor & Eton Society
VISIT
The Journey
Departure –9.45am from Alma Road Coach Park – car park end. Please ensure you are there by 9.35am so we can leave on time.
10.45 Arrive. Tea/coffee & biscuits + introduction.
1.00pm Group light lunch in the Old Kiln room.
3.45pm Depart.
Arrival at Alma Road Coach Park – approx. 5.00pm
Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village is an art gallery in the village of Compton, Surrey. It is dedicated to the work of the Victorian-era painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts. The gallery has been Grade II* listed on the National Heritage List for England since June 1975. Mary, his wife, was also an artist.
Limnerslease – home to George and Mary is open and some of her work is shown here.
Watts Cemetery Chapel – This unique Grade I-listed terracotta building is the work of artist and designer Mary Watts. Local people helped her create this between 1895 and 1904. It opened in 1898 and remains a working chapel. Clay tiles decorate the outside. Inside is one of the most important and experimental wall paintings in England.
The cemetery was laid out by Mary Watts with the help of Compton Parish Council.
The chapel and house are separate from the gallery. It is about 10 mins flat walk to the chapel and 10 mins. uphill through woods to the house.
Kingston Bagpuize House remains a family home. Surrounded by garden and parkland this beautiful
early Georgian style house is in red brick with stone quoins, banding and window surrounds.
The entrance hall is dominated by the handsome cantilever staircase. The elegant reception rooms have
period furniture and paintings.
The gardens are notable for a large collection of plants which give year-round interest including
snowdrops and magnolia in spring, flowering trees and shrubs in summer and autumn colour from
September. The raised terrace walk which leads the visitor to the charming 18th-century pavilion also
has views towards the house and over the Woodland Garden.
There is a tea room
Kingston Bagpuize House
Tuesday 19th September 2023
Near Abingdon, visiting Dorchester on Thames en route with time to visit the abbey and have lunch.
Departure –9.45am from Alma Road Coach Park – car park end. Please ensure you are there by 9.40am so we can leave on time.
Visit -Toad Hall Garden Centre, Henley for coffee and a look round.
Midday – Waterfront Café, Benson which provides a wide range of light refreshments in a very pleasant setting on the River Thames.
2.30 Kingston Bagpuize, Abingdon
Departure – 4.30pm from Kingston Bagpuize – Arrival at Alma Road coach park – approx. 6.00pm.
Thursday 15th June 2023 – Leeds Castle, Kent
Applications for this must be received by Wednesday 7th June 2023
Cost – £36 This includes coach fare, entrance to the castle and a tip for the driver.
Leeds Castle has been a Norman stronghold; the private property of six of England’s medieval queens; a palace used by Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon; a Jacobean country house; a Georgian mansion; an elegant early 20th century retreat for the influential and famous; and in the 21st century it has become one of the most visited historic buildings in Britain. The resulting New Leeds Castle has externally changed little today and was finished by 1823. Unfortunately, the cost of the rebuild caused Wykeham Martin financial difficulties and he was forced to sell the contents of the Castle at auction, but his son Charles, with the help of his wife’s substantial dowry, was able to rebuild the family fortune. When the Wykeham Martins acquired land at Hollingbourne in 1895, Leeds became one of the largest private estates in Kent. By 1925 the family was forced to sell the property to pay death duties and it was acquired by the Anglo-American heiress the Hon. Olive Paget, then Mrs Wilson-Filmer, who, looking for a country retreat in Kent, saw its potential, and had the style, imagination and funds to carry out the necessary modifications.
Wednesday 5th April 2023 – Kelmscott Manor, Lechlade
Applications for this must be received by Friday 17th March
(Kelmscott require final numbers and payment before 22nd March)
Cost – £48 This includes coach fare, entrance to manor, tea/coffee on arrival, cold buffet lunch, introductory talk and a tip for the driver.
Kelmscott Manor was the country home of William Morris – poet, craftsman and socialist – from 1871 until his death in 1896. The manor was reopened in April 2022 after a major restoration project undertaken by the Society of Antiquaries. The house contains a collection of his possessions and works of Morris and his associates, including furniture, textiles, carpets and ceramics. Visitors can explore all three floors of the manor, including the attic spaces which would originally have been used for farm labourers. Morris’s bedroom contains many of his original books, and a collection of Dürer prints. Other rooms display furniture from Red House in Bexleyheath, Kelmscott House in Hammersmith and other family homes. There are also further works by Rossetti, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and Pieter Brueghel the Younger. The garden includes many old trees, including a very old black mulberry at the rear of the house. The front garden is walled with a summer house in one corner, and both the wall and the summerhouse are Grade II listed. William Morris named both his London residence “Kelmscott House” and the “Kelmscott Press” that he founded, after Kelmscott. He was buried in the village churchyard in a tomb designed by his friend and colleague Philip Webb.
Monday, 14 October 2019 – Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is a nineteenth-century mansion and estate near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, constructed during the years following 1883 for the English financier and politician Sir Herbert Samuel Leon in the Victorian Gothic, Tudor, and Dutch Baroque styles. It became famous as the central site for British (and subsequently, Allied) codebreakers during World War II, although at the time of their operation this fact was a closely guarded secret.
During the Second World War, the estate housed the British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers – most importantly the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers; among its most notable early personnel the GC&CS team of codebreakers included Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry.
Thursday, 13 June 2019 – Cirencester & Rodmartan Manor
The first stop will in Cirencester where there will be time for lunch before going the short journey to Rodmartan Manor. The Manor is a supreme example of a house built and all its furniture made according to Arts and Crafts ideals and was one of the last country houses to be built and furnished in the old traditional style when everything was done by hand with local stone, local timber and local craftsmen. Ernest Barnsley and the Cotswold group of Craftsmen, who built and furnished the house for Claud and Margaret Biddulph, beginning in 1909, were responsible for the revival of many traditional crafts in the Cotswolds which were in danger of dying out. The gardens are delightful and the visit will end with tea and cakes.
Thursday, 11 April 2019 – Bowood House, Calne
Bowood House is home to the Marquis and Marchioness of Lansdowne. It hosts a wealth of unique art and antiques with many historical treasures – the Library and Chapel, the laboratory where Joseph Priestley discovered Oxygen in 1774, the Sculpture Gallery, the Orangery and a range of exhibition rooms. Nearly 300 years of amazing artefacts and antiques from the family history are on display. The House surrounded by 2,000 acres of Grade 1 listed ‘Capability’ Brown parkland with a mix of plantations and sweeping lawns leading down to a mile long lake and the Italian inspired terrace gardens and the herbaceous border surrounding the Georgian house.
Thursday, 18th October 2018 – Eltham Palace, Greenwich
We had an excellent journey and arrived in glorious sunshine and immediately made for the Orchard House Café for morning coffee. The Art Deco mansion was built in the 1930s by Stephen and Virginia Courtauld and is a wonderful example of architecture blending beautifully alongside the Great Hall of the medieval Eltham Palace and Gardens. The Great Hall was built for Edward IV in the 1470s and Henry VIII spent much of his childhood here. You enter the Palace and are immediately in the circular entrance hall, a mix of Art Deco and cutting-edge Swedish design,. The panelled dining room is characterised by geometric and stylised shapes. Virginia Courtauld’s bedroom and luxurious golden bathroom is set in a lavish gold mosaic niche containing a statue of the goddess Psyche. Virginia’s walk-in wardrobe contains beautiful period dresses, hats and accessories. Even the Courtauld’s pet lemur, Mah-Jongg, had centrally-heated sleeping quarters on the upper floor. As you go from Art Deco into the magnificent medieval Great Hall with it’s. minstrels’ gallery and glorious hammer-beam roof built for Edward IV five hundred years ago – the third-largest hammerbeam roof in England. There are 19 acres of historic gardens to explore including the Rock Garden with its series of pools and cascades running down to the moat and the sunken rose garden. We arrived back in London around 5.30 and I think everyone agreed that we had a very enjoyable day. 28 members took part in this visit.
