Easter with donkeys, historic homes and a spa COMPLTED 4/26 - Page 21 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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What a difference the sunshine makes. The photos are beautiful! No ceiling, and no floor? Wow. I guess they did a great job on the fireplace to make sure it stayed stuck to the wall.
They certainly knew how to build things to last in those days.
Barrington is very beautiful so far even without luxurious furnishings. So nice to that the day turned out so beautiful while you were there. We have a saying in Kentucky that if you don't like the weather just give it a few minutes and it will change.
I know a lot of places that have that setting - it's not usually one we have over here, as if the rain sets in for the day, it really is there for the whole day!
Sunday 27 March – part seven: are we going to make it to the house?
This is the long gallery, which ran along the whole length of the attic floor. In Tudor times, it would been a space for exercise, but by 1907, it was apparently full of holes and provided a “great home for owls”. Colonel Lyle restored the walls using his collection of panelling.
I loved this story – it’s just classic!
In this room, I was fascinated by the plant growing over the window. If someone was going to train it to do that, I’m not sure it would look as beautiful as this. Isn’t nature something?
As you may have noticed in some of the later photos, it was now pelting down with rain again outside but what do you do when that happens on vacation? Well, if you’re anything like us, you just get on with things and make the best of it. You should’ve seen all the people crowded around in front of the exit in their waterproof gear refusing to go outside. For goodness sake, I get it if you’re not dressed for the weather (although given the forecast, you knew what was coming frankly…. ), but if you have the right gear, just get out there!
The rain eased off as we walked back to the car, and as we set off, it wasn’t a bad day again…
We did debate what to do next. At first we were going to go down to the coast, but the GPS told us we’d get there only a few minutes before we were booked for dinner 30 miles away, so that wasn’t going to work. In the end, I realised the GPS was taking us past Montacure, and a quick check of our National Trust members’ handbook told me that Montacure House was here, so we set off that way instead…
When we got there, the sign said the house closed at 4:00pm, which was disappointing, given the handbook had said 4:30pm, but the woman at reception said if we went straight to the house, we should still get in, so we power walked our way over there, and sure enough, we were the last to be admitted.
We did something of a whistle stop tour. This beautiful house was completed in 1601 for Sir Edward Phelips. This was the entrance hall:
This is the parlour, which has always been used either as a parlour or a dining room throughout the building’s history. It’s empty of furniture, because it was used for filming last year by the BBC for the historic drama Wolf Hall. We didn’t watch it, but you may have seen or heard of it. They’re leaving it empty, so they can carry on with conservation work, before it’s returned to how it would have looked in Edward Phelips’ day.
This room originally used to be a bedroom, but it was turned into a drawing room in the 1700s.
Even in the pictures where the sun is shining, the sky looks dark and ominous.
Loved the story about the gardener in the moat! Guessing he may have been looking for a new line of work!
Beautiful wood carvings. Ahhh, the rain. Some people do melt in the rain, ya know.
Very cool you could just pop over to another property like that! I've seen the commercials for Wolf Hall, but haven't watched it. I love how they use actual buildings for some shows instead of just sets.
__________________
Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
Even in the pictures where the sun is shining, the sky looks dark and ominous.
Loved the story about the gardener in the moat! Guessing he may have been looking for a new line of work!
Beautiful wood carvings. Ahhh, the rain. Some people do melt in the rain, ya know.
Apparently!
Quote:
Very cool you could just pop over to another property like that! I've seen the commercials for Wolf Hall, but haven't watched it. I love how they use actual buildings for some shows instead of just sets.
The National Trust have obviously been doing a great job of getting some additional income from filming at their properties.
Sunday 27 March – part eight: a shock in the bedroom!
We made our way upstairs in Montacure House…
By the time we got up to the first floor, we were able to slow down, as we realised we were other people, despite being the last ones in.
There was quite a shock in this bedroom!
Mark missed it completely when he walked in, and I had to call him back to see it….
This is Lord Curzon’s room, and there’s actually quite a sad story about him. In 1923, the Prime Minister became ill and resigned and Curzon, who was then the country’s Foreign Secretary, figured he’d be chosen as the new Prime Minister. He was duly summoned to London, only to be told that Stanley Baldwin had been chosen by the King as the new Prime Minister and Curzon was so shocked, he burst into tears. Curzon served under Baldwin, but died two years later.
As you can see, once again, it looked beautiful outside. See what I mean about it being a bizarre day?
This is the library, which was originally the Great Chamber, where important visitors would have been received and would have then dined in state, with servants bringing a string of food to them. After the meal, there would then have been dancing, music or a play. It was turned into a library at the end of the 1700s.
This is the Crimson Room, a name it got from the colour of wallpaper it had at one point. This was originally the “withdrawing room”, where all the guests from the next door Great Chamber would head to while the room was made ready for entertainment. By the mid 1600s, it was turned into a bedroom.
We then went into the Hall Chamber, a bedroom reserved for the most important visitors.
The next room is home to the Goodhart Sampler collection. Dr. Goodhart was a doctor of medicine and an anaesthetist, who spent more than 30 years collecting needlework samplers. He started collecting with an impulse buy from an antiques shop in the 1950s and, from there, his collection grew to nearly 300 pieces. Although at first he collected anything, he ended up focusing on samplers from the 17th century, and they are truly amazing. I found it hard to believe how old they were, they still look so good today.
We headed upstairs…
… into this, which is the Tudor gallery, and it’s the longest of its kind in the country…
It’s home to a number of portraits from the National Portrait Gallery, mainly from the Tudor and Jacobean eras. I didn’t photograph any of the portraits, as that just didn’t feel right to me, but some of them were absolutely stunning, and I’m no portrait person.
We then headed downstairs, and we left quite a lot of people up there – I’d say probably about 20 or 30 people, although we could hear them being rounded up and hurried along, as by now, it was almost 4:30pm, and time for the house to close.
We finished up in the dining room, which was originally two rooms. The first was the butterie, where wine and beer were dispensed from and the dining room.
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More beautiful homes. Glad you didn't let the weather stop you from having a wonderful day. It is strange to see the homes so empty. While looking at all of the donkeys, I wondered why there are so many of them living in the UK. Mark seemed to be enjoying his time with the donkeys.
Wow, this place was worth the stop. After seeing a place with little to no furnishings, and then one that's full of furnishings, it truly helps set the time and mood for each room when it's furnished. What a difference!
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Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
I'm guessing that would be quite a luxury - having a bathtub in one's bedroom. Looked perfect for soaking!
I love all the plaster- work in these old homes.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
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Colonel Lyle restored the walls using his collection of panelling. 
They’re leaving it empty, so they can carry on with conservation work, before it’s returned to how it would have looked in Edward Phelips’ day. 
and the dining room. 
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