Layer Marney Tower
While this is not in Bedford County, I was so taken by the history of Layer Marney Tower, I wrote the following.
Atop an ancient mound of earth bestrewn with barren ancient trees and the threat of winter wind and rains she stood as she has for centuries as she should to mark a proud battlement where many have fallen for King and Country and indeed for God and sanctity. Empty now, I enter her hallowed hall where commanders stood to protect the great land plotting from the high-point a vantage vital to the protection of the royal and common interest. Many thousands have died here over generations of ancient war with Rome, Saxton armies, Vikings, and through to the second World War.
It is peaceful now, indeed quiet except for the pending storm and the rattle of staffs atop the imposing towers baring the mark of it's country and protector. It is barely warm within her walls even as a fire rages to either side of me. I admire her from within as I stand in the center great hall where embattlements were laid out by the commander and his surveyor, orders were barked, soldiers scrambled to carry out their orders, and all manner of planning and detail ensued. She is built of sturdy root deep within the historic soil that feeds her massive stand against times ravages and mans evil. Her bones exposed, her flesh of stone and brick, her many arteries, her bowels, she was home to just two families the first struck in just two generations by tragedy and war, the second impoverished, she was reduced to a common farm house and then abandoned for a time when the earth took her for it's victim in 1884. She found mercy upon her soul healing her wounds leaving the kind of scars one wears for an eternity.
She stands a massive bold embodiment of masculine and privilege born in 1515 of a kings guard, a Knight of the Garter, a 1st Baron who held office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Privy Seal, Vice-Chamberlain of the Household and Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard. She bares the DNA of the kings highest trustee born to serve King Henry VIII. She is as one would imagine, imposing, grand, glorious to God and King, and a home to man and wife, but no-one can imagine her scale as they round the drive and come within sight. She is Tudor to serve two Kings and a Gatehouse. Her glory spanned into the Victorian then lost as the crown fell from the monarchs head. Great Britain has lost her rule. Her empire shattered who she so dutifully protected and served only to join her master as a relic of a period where Great Britain was as bold and proud as my Lady. All who passed her threshold in the day wore might and power on their sleeves and in their hearts a pride that cannot be fathomed. Today they come with maps and leave with trinkets bought with pounds as worthless as their barer. She was born of gold and jewels won by Knights in the glory of the King. None dare gaze upon her who were not worthy of her respect. She was to serve and be served by the bravest of the mightiest conquerers. She was to serve the world under one rule, one monarch, one King, and now she serves commoners in common endeavors.
Weddings, tea, and photographs are all that is left if you are just passing by. She is beautiful as she is exhibited though as dead as the era in which she was born. It is a macabre display of a corpse for anyone with a few bob to see. But when the long of the day falls upon the gardens and the gray flesh of the deceased regains a warm hue, touch the body and feel her soul for she is still with us. Feel her flesh warm and in her heart the cadence beat of the proud soldiers she served through times of war. Her day may have passed, but her memory is reenacted in the corridors when no-one dares to witness. I morn her death only until I touch her walls and close my eyes. There in my mind she lives again. And if I wait, she speaks to me.
Constructed in the first half of the reign of Henry VIII, Layer Marney Tower is in many ways the apotheosis of the Tudor gatehouse, and is the tallest example in Britain. It is contemporaneous with East Barsham Manor in Norfolk and Sutton Place, Surrey, with which latter building it shares the rare combination of brick and terracotta construction.[1] The building is principally the creation of Henry 1st Lord Marney, who died in 1523, and his son John, who continued the building work but died just two years later, leaving no male heirs to continue the family line or the construction. What was completed was the main range measuring some three hundred feet long, the principal gatehouse that is about eighty feet tall, an array of outbuildings, and a new church.
The buildings suffered considerable damage from the Great English earthquake of 1884, and a subsequent report in The Builder magazine described the state of the house as such that ‘the outlay needed to restore the towers to anything like a sound and habitable condition would be so large that the chance of the work ever being done appears remote indeed’. The repairs were begun by brother and sister Alfred and Kezia Peache, who re-floored and re-roofed the gatehouse, as well as creating the garden to the south of the Tower.
The next owner was Walter de Zoete who carried on and expanded the work, with a team of 13 domestic and 16 outside staff. He enlarged the gardens, built a folly known as the Tea House (converted to a self-catering holiday cottage in 1999), and converted the stables into a Long Gallery where he housed his collection of furniture, paintings and objets d’arts. As a consequence of all this work it would be fair to say that the interior owes more to the Edwardian aesthetic of Walter de Zoete than to the Marneys.
Walter de Zoete lost money in the Japanese stock market crash, and sold the house to a Dr and Mrs Campbell. The house came to the present owners, the Charringtons, in 1959. Gerald and Susan Charrington had been married in Layer Marney church in 1957; two years later Mrs Campbell’s executors put the house up for sale and the Charringtons purchased it. It has been occupied by the Charrington family ever since.
The gardens are listed as Grade II on the English Heritage Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England, while the building itself was designated Grade I in 1952.
In 2012 the tower and gardens are open to the public from 1 April to 30 September for a small admission fee. The tower is also available for wedding ceremonies and receptions, as well as conferences. It has proved popular as a media location. Films and television programs which feature shots of Layer Marney Tower include Preaching to the Perverted, Pasolini's Canterbury Tales, and Lovejoy. In December 2011 the tower was the venue for BBC1's Antiques Roadshow.[1]
