Sunday Morning Amble

As many of you might know/remember, we live in the corner of St Albans called St Michaels. This is one of the three old parishes of St Albans and sits out on the far western edge of St Albans. It has a very villagesque feel to it and is blessed by various historical attributes, such as Tudor houses, 400 year old pubs and the old Roman ruins abutting it.

As such, there is a Society for St Michael's and Kingsbury , a smaller division within St Michaels, which aims to preserve the historic fabric of the village, protect the interests of the residents and encourage a sense of community. Today was the Society’s Twelfth Day of Christmas walk. About twenty people, three dogs and two pheasants, see below, went ambling to the Old Gorhambury House ruins.

It was a beautiful winter’s morning, bright blue clear skies and only a touch of frost on the grass. It was quite a pedestrian pace, which was fine as it gave us the chance to meet some of our neighbours. We walked up past the current Gorhambury House to the ruins of the old house which was built in the 16^th century by Sir Francis Bacon’s father (see below). Bacon himself did live there for a time but was eventually left to disrepair when the newer Georgian house was built in the 1770’s.

The remains are quiet and sit at the top of a long sweeping hillside and on this peaceful Sunday morning it was magnificent to take in the sight.

Upon our return trip, one of our neighbours, Michael, convinced the Estate’s gamekeeper to divest two recently killed pheasants into his care. Guinness was rather curious about these extra members of our party, but left them well enough alone. It did however bring about some strange looks from the families out for a Sunday promenade.

We were treated to some light refreshments after the walk at one of the couple’s historic home. They are really into classic cars and own, maintain and race several. It was quite a treat to be able to see some of these spectacular machines, even if we understood almost nothing about the rather unique and complex mechanisms of 1920’s and 30’s sports cars.

All in all a very nice way to spend a wintry weekend morning.

For an aerial view of St Michael's click here