Having coffee in Caffè Nero in Golders Green 🙂

As mentioned in my previous post, we went from Harrow to Headstone Manor. First built in 1310, when it was provided with moat, it has been altered and rebuilt since then but the core remains largely 16th-century.

Entry is through the 16th-century Small Barn (above). There you can view a film of the history of the house and its area from the Stone Age onwards.

Above is a view of part of the moat, today inhabited by ducks, coots and moorhens.

Rafters in the Small Barn.

Crossing the moat to enter the manor.

A view from one of the windows.

These are the remains of a Tudor staircase. You cannot climb it, however, because, owing to alterations to the house, the staircase just stops at the ceiling. There is nothing above it.

A scan-shot of the Great Hall. Odd bits of woodwork from various periods are revealed giving the feeling if a building being demolished rather than a building as lived in.

Revealed rafters in the Great Hall.

A scan-shot of the rear of the manor.

This venerable old tree lives at the back of the house. To be honest, I don’t know what kind of tree it is. Maybe a yew?

This building is called the Granary.

So, what was my impression of the visit? I must admit to a certain degree of disappointment. The house (Grade I listed) is no doubt old and historically interesting but the visitor, to be honest, sees little of this. What the visitor sees is a lot of rooms furnished with display boards and a few cabinets of museum exhibits. I derived little sense of a lived-in house with a long human history.

That view is perhaps unfair. What, after all, could the curators do to improve matters? Furnish the rooms in period style to give an impression, albeit fictitious, of what the house might have looked like when inhabited? Whatever is done, someone will be disappointed with it.

Would I recommend the place to others. Yes, why not? You might not share my finicky views and enjoy the visit more in consequence.

This is part of St Pancras Station as seen from the forecourt of King’s Cross Station. St Pancras is, I think, the most beautiful of London’s railway stations, both inside and outside.

Many of our journeys start from here and so will a forthcoming trip for which we will be taking the Eurostar to our destination.

Today we came to have breakfast at the station’s branch of Pain Quotidien before taking the tube to Harrow.

In Harrow we had a look at the shops in St Anne’s Shopping Centre and stopped for coffee at Costa.

Next, we caught a bus to Headstone Manor. Join us there 🙂

I cannot imagine such an earth-shaking historical upheaval actually coming to pass but there is a desire expressed by certain groups to divorce London entirely from the UK and make it an independent state with membership of the EU.

A recent petition to this effect attracted 108,855 signatures.

I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about economic and other matters to pronounce on whether an independent London could survive and thrive but I have often wondered whether it should not at least be self-governing like Scotland and Wales with its own parliament.

If that seems ridiculous, consider the relative population figures:

Greater London (2018) 8.85m

Scotland (2016) 5.45m

Wales (2018) 3.18m

I am sure that you noticed that the population of London exceeds the combined population of the other two.

For comparison, the population of the self-governing Isle of Man (2019) is 86,369.

Independence is an unlikely scenario, of course, but London voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU and is in many ways a coherent entity with a history and, I hope, a future, of its own.

In an independence referendum, how would I vote? Truth to tell, I do not know but I would be greatly tempted to vote yes.