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The Tudors and Stuarts monasteries and generally had smaller and poorer communities. The nuns The Heart of England at Lacock were recruited from daughters of the gentry, not from the lower classes, and their families paid for the privilege of placing them there. They Living It Up observed the same religious obligations as their brother monks, saying seven services each day. When Henry’s commissioners were investigating corruption in monasteries at the start of the Dissolution, they could find no fault with Lacock. They reported that the nuns were scrupulously following the rules of their order, that there were no complaints against them, and that they had adequate funds to remain solvent: stores worth £257. 10d. and jewels, plates and ornaments worth £104. 9s. 2d. They escaped with a fine. Despite this, three years later they were ordered to disband. The nuns were pensioned off, the abbey was closed and the lead stripped from its roof. 58 HE TUDOR AGE SAW A FLOWERING OF ART, OF MUSIC, OF previous Four years later the abbey was sold by the King to William Sharington, 59 Elizabeth I carried in IMAGINATIVE AND ORIGINAL POETRY AND DRAMA. The same procession. Courtiers who came from a family of minor gentry in Norfolk. Like many ambitious spirit of adventure and ingenuity flourished in the buildings of the built on a lavish scale men in Tudor England he had acquired wealth and status by attaching himself T to receive the Queen era. The key moment was the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry as she travelled to a grandee, Thomas Seymour, the brother of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane VIII. The bare facts are well known: how in a few years after his rift with the around England on Seymour. Sharington planned to make Lacock his country seat. As a condition Pope over the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, monasteries her summer progress. of his purchase he had first to demolish the church attached to the abbey, and were closed down, the monks were pensioned off or fled, and their treasure he used the stone from the church to build a stable block. One of his descendants was taken for the King. This upheaval saw the greatest change in English life lives there today in the former hayloft, now converted to a comfortable flat. since the Norman invasion 500 years earlier. It marked the decline of the She says that Sharington was a rogue, but his reconstruction of the monastery power of the Church in favour of the power of the monarch, with all the was imaginative. He left the medieval cloisters at the centre of the house and consequences that flowed from that. As always the buildings tell the story best. their surrounding rooms, building his private quarters above them. Even on a There are some buildings that can be called mouth-wateringly beautiful, that make you gasp with pleasure when you first set eyes on them. They do not have to be grand buildings, nor buildings with a distinctive style. The tower William Sharington built at Often they are of a mishmash of styles accrued through the centuries, but Lacock to house perfect in their confusion. Their setting is likely to be as important as the his treasure and building itself, and the weather can help. to entertain guests. I approached Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire on a hot summer day. The drive curves gracefully through parkland with old trees and meadows defined by elegant Victorian cast-iron fencing. The front entrance of the house, with its delicate stonework and exotic decoration, would not look out of place as the entrance to a small palace in India. As you came round the side, however, you are transported firmly back to England. Two big bay windows look over a long terrace and beyond it to a river where the willows blow white in the wind and two boys lie on the bank fishing. A tall tower marks the next corner of the house. Beyond it the mood changes to religious, with the stone walls at ground-floor level punctuated by windows that would not look out of place in a church. This side could seem austere, were it not softened by a jungle of hydrangeas planted in a corner, ten feet high and fifteen yards round the base. You may not like hydrangeas, but I do. I even like the common purple rhododendrons that many gardeners hold in contempt. The story of Lacock is the story, in microcosm, of England after the Reformation. It was founded as a nunnery in 1232. Nunneries were rarer than how we built britain received a royal pardon and his estates were returned to him. It could be called an everyday story of county folk under the Tudors. The appearance of Lacock reveals the glorious mixture of styles that predominated in the Tudor era. Apart from the medieval remains, the new building is partly modelled on the latest fashions taken from the Continent and partly on a purely English design. The entrance hall, a high room with strange terracotta statues set in alcoves, was built in the mid eighteenth century and just adds to the delight. Lacock retains at least something of the pre-Dissolution appearance of Britain. But we paid a heavy price in the loss of so many great monasteries. The miserable remnants that remain, a ruined arch here, the foundations of the monks’ dormitory there, all now preserved within neatly mown lawns, are a reminder of what was once a dazzling inheritance. Worse still, the churches 61 were stripped of their decoration, paintings, statues and valuable ornaments. We have become used to the simplicity of English churches only because, at least until the Victorian revival of rich decoration, we have known no better. The money from this loot went first into Henry’s coffers to strengthen the power of the king and the magnificence of his court. But ultimately, through the distribution of the former monastic lands, the wealth was spread, as at Lacock, among the aristocracy and the gentry. It was they who created a building boom and gave us some of the finest houses and palaces ever built in Britain. The face of inspiration ‘Her hearse … seemed to be an island swimming in water, for round it warm summer day these cloisters are cold. The nuns would have needed their The front of Lacock there rained showers of tears.’ I could have used these florid words when was charmingly fur-lined cloaks as they processed from their quarters to attend service during remodelled in the commentating on the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. They would have the winter months, watched by the Abbess through a hidden window the size eighteenth century perfectly described the emotions of that day as the coffin, on a gun-carriage, in the Gothic style, of a letter-box that allowed her to keep an eye on her charges. and merges happily was pulled along Kensington Gore to Westminster Abbey. I did not think there The octagonal tower was Sharington’s most original contribution to with the earlier was something mawkish or over-emotional about the reaction to Diana’s death. Lacock. It contains a strong-room to hold his treasure. The only access is through building behind. She had struck a chord with the British public and the outpouring of grief an iron-bound door. In the centre of the room is a finely carved octagonal seemed natural to me. The ‘hearse … an island swimming in water’ is not, table in stone, matching the octagonal shape of the tower. Above there is a however, a description of Diana’s funeral but an account of the funeral of similar room with a similar table, reached from the roof. Here Sharington’s Elizabeth I from the pen of a contemporary of William Shakespeare, the visitors, following the habits of the grandest families, could come to admire playwright Thomas Dekker. the view, eat sweetmeats and drink wine after dinner. Now Elizabeth I and Diana do not stand comparison. One was a junior But Sharington was almost brought down by his greed. Not content member of the royal family who showed a surprisingly human touch, the other with what he earned as a money-lender and a trader in Bristol, four years after a great monarch who presided over a period of unparalleled peace and prosperity he bought Lacock he secured an appointment as under-treasurer of the Bristol and who was widely revered. But those who believe that the true British character Mint. He was soon using his office to clip the coinage, reducing the official is ‘buttoned up’ should look carefully at the response to Elizabeth’s funeral. The weight of the coins that were issued and keeping the surplus gold or silver for tears came naturally, though perhaps Thomas Dekker went a little over the top himself. When he was discovered, he confessed to embezzling £4,000 over three in describing the reaction as her funeral barge was rowed on the Thames to years. His estates were confiscated and he was sentenced to death. He only Whitehall: ‘Fish under water wept out their eyes of pearl and swum blind after.’ escaped execution by shopping his patron, Sir Thomas Seymour, who had Elizabeth I never built anything notable for herself, but by her fallen out of favour with the king and was executed. Sharington himself patronage of those who supported her, flattered her and wanted to bask in the how we built britain the tudors and stuarts glory of a royal visit, she inspired some of the most lavish buildings Britain has ever seen.