Day 4 – Off to Oxford and Blenheim Castle

On Monday morning Lyndal opted for a leisurely start to the day and I took the underground and visited the Natural History Museum for a couple of hours. Like the Maritime Museum, this is a place that could occupy you for the whole day. Unfortunately a special exhibit on this public holiday meant a massive queue for the section which housed the Charles Darwin centre, but nevertheless I strolled through some fascinating halls of exhibits before returning to home base in time for us to catch the 1.00pm train up to Oxford.

On arrival we first went to pick up our hire car, at which point we had a most unfortunate attack of the miserlys: we declined to pay the 12 quid extra for a GPS reasoning it was only a small place – how hard could it be. Well, as we found to our cost how wrong you could be. Oxford would have to be the worst town in the UK to drive in – and that’s saying something. One ways, no ways, pedestrian only streets, restricted access – it had it all. So our progress (and regress) was marked by curses, mutterings, querulous questions and increasingly short answers.

Eventually, and just in time, we found our way to the River Thames for our date with the punt. We had hired punt plus driver, as we had heard that punting was not as simple as it looks, and expected some husky young undergraduate would be propelling the craft. We were a little surprised then when our punter turned out to be a slight and diminutive young schoolgirl. However she was a very competent young lady with the punt and took us on a peaceful hour-long tour up and down the river.

It was a pleasant and mild late afternoon and there were lots of punts out on the water, many obviously in the hands of beginners. When we saw all the difficulties they were in we were very pleased to have a skilled punter. Many a muttered curse was heard out on the water including: “whose idea was this…”. One crew had given up altogether and were pulling themselves along the bank by clutching weeds and tree roots etc. After a while we left the crowds behind and cruised the quieter reaches – all in all a very pleasant hour.

We then found our way to the B&B (with only one wrong turn), a nice establishment in a semi rural setting. Dinner was at the “Royal Sun”, a 17th century inn just up the road. Their speciality was the “deep dish pie” which naturally we had to have, and rashly ordered entree as well having had no lunch. Result: thoroughly over indulged in food once again!

In the morning it was off to Blenheim Palace.

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, probably Britain’s greatest ever field commander, was voted the land and means to build the palace by a grateful Monarch and Parliament in 1705. It was a reward for his most famous victory at Blenheim, on the upper Danube, as commander of the Allied Army in the War of Spanish Succession.

Planned on a most stupendous scale, building commenced in 1705. Unfortunately the Churchills had failed to read the fine print and no definitive amount had been stipulated in the Act of Parliament. As the cost of the building mounted, funds were doled out in an increasingly niggardly fashion. Nothing erodes gratitude and friendship like money problems and in the end, in 1711, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough who had been close friend and confidant of Queen Anne for many years, had a spectacular falling out with the Queen. The Churchills thought it politic to remove themselves to Europe for a time and all work on the building halted until their return in 1714 after the Queen’s death. Sadly the Duke did not live to fully enjoy his reward; after a succession of strokes he died in 1722 with Blenheim Palace still incomplete.

The Duchess Sarah, reputedly temperamental, but also fiercely loyal to her husband and determined to see Blenheim Palace completed as his memorial, battled on and finally saw the building substantially complete by 1733, although some work was still going on in 1735. When she died in 1744 she and her husband were interred together in the Palace chapel.

In 1874 Winston Churchill, grandson of the 7th Duke, was born Blenheim Palace during a visit by his parents.

We had booked a tour of the private apartments, which turned out to be very informative as we were the only ones on the tour and had the undivided attention of our knowledgeable tour guide. As we toured the rooms we were given the low down on the past occupants – in particular Consuelo Vanderbilt.

Her marriage to Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough became an international emblem of the socially advantageous, but loveless, marriages common during the Gilded Age.

Determined to secure the highest-ranking mate possible for her only daughter, a union that would emphasize the preeminence of the Vanderbilt family in New York society, Alva Vanderbilt engineered a meeting between Consuelo and the financially embarrassed land-owning Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, chatelaine of Blenheim Palace.

Unfortunately Consuelo Vanderbilt had no interest in the duke, being secretly engaged to an American, Winthrop Rutherfurd. Her mother cajoled, wheedled, begged, and then, ultimately, ordered her daughter to marry Marlborough. When Consuelo – a docile teenager whose only notable characteristic at the time was abject obedience to her fearsome mother – made plans to elope, she was locked in her room and Alva threatened to have Rutherfurd murdered (when we were in Newport a couple of years ago we were shown through the Vanderbilt mansion and the room where she was incarcerated).

Still, she refused. It was only when Alva Vanderbilt claimed that her health was being seriously and irretrievably undermined by Consuelo’s stubbornness and appeared to be on death’s door that the malleable girl acquiesced. Alva made an astonishing recovery from her entirely phantom illness, and when the wedding took place, Consuelo stood at the altar reportedly weeping behind her veil. The duke, for his part, gave up the woman he reportedly loved back in England and collected US$2.5 million (approximately US$67.7 million in 2015 dollars) in railroad stock as a marriage settlement plus a settlement each year.

We then joined the main tour of all the public rooms of the palace before inspecting the gardens.

It is a most impressive castle and well worth a visit. We could have spent a full day there.

We headed back to Oxford to hand in our car and join a walking tour of the Colleges.

Having allowed nearly two hours for the fifteen minute drive plus a relaxed lunch, we ran into a horrendous Oxford traffic snarl and only just made it to our tour in time to start. We met our guide Stuart from Oxford Walking Tours outside Trinity College and then strolled through Exeter,

Jesus (noting the portrait of T.E.Lawrence (of Arabia) in the dining hall, together with many former British PM’s)

then past the Divinity School and Bodelean Library,

through Hertford,

Balliol

Johns

and back to Trinity, finishing our tour there.

After the tour it was back to the Railway Station for the train back to London and our home away from home.