Saturday 15 July 2017

Wedding Day

Steve Day has been our good friend for over 20 years, and is a member of our old church back in Kirby Muxloe. 
We are looking forward to attending his wedding today, and will be leaving here very early to journey up to the Midlands. The marriage venue is Kelham Hall, near Newark.
A key figure of mid-Victorian Gothic architecture, George Gilbert Scott had originally been commissioned by the Manners-Sutton family to add a conservatory to the house. But in 1857 a fire destroyed the older parts of the house and the architect was left with a blank canvas on which to express all the exuberance of his imagination. The result is a redbrick riot of Gothic styles, with towers, gables, arcades, exquisitely carved columns and fireplaces, and more than a score of different window designs. For 70 years Kelham Hall became home to an Anglican order of monks, gaining an impressive domed chapel, and today it remains a wonderful hidden treasure of English rural architecture.

Yes, it does look remarkably like the Railway Hotel at St Pancras in London, another of GGS's designs. I shall refrain from jokes about Steve 'marrying above his station', or the bride's train!

7 comments:

  1. Have a good wedding.Be nice to see your outfit too!

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  2. Well, I just had to comment after reading of your connection with Kirby Muxloe. In 1965 I lived a few miles away in Newtown Unthank (wonderful village name!) and my first son was born in Roundhills Maternity Home in Kirby Muxloe. And in a move like yours, I also moved to the South West to live - in Cornwall, 30+ years ago.
    Have a lovely day at the wedding of Steve and Angela.

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    1. Thankyou so much for commenting. Roundhills Maternity Home is long gone. Newtown Unthank is surprisingly OLD . It was deemed a NEW Town because it was built to replace an older village where they had the plague. The wedding was lovely and it was good to catch up with our KM friends

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  3. When I was at school in the distant past monks from Kelham used to come to take services on Sundays.
    Their reward was to be dragged round the countryside on walks after lunch!!
    Do you know what happened to them? Did the order move or were they absorbed into other monasterys? Sue

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    1. The number of monks joining "The Society of Sacred Mission" fell significantly and in the 70s they sold Kelham and moved to a smaller place at Wellen near Milton Keynes. They still run a retreat house there and also one in Lesotho. The old Lady Chapel at Kelham, with its beautiful stained glass windows is now a bar. It seemed a little sad to me that we gathered for a wedding in an awesome inspiring building formerly filled with prayer and worship, but because of our perverse laws, the name of God could not be mentioned at all during the ceremony.

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    2. Thanks Angela for answering my question.
      I have been smiling and wondering how the monks felt being sent to an all girls' school for the week end. We loved them coming and when we were in the sixth form used to invite them into the common room for tea and toast! Sue

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