Photos from walk on Thursday 7th September from Middle Assendon to Henley

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A hot day – the hottest of the year!  And nearly 10 miles.

 

Opposite the pub in Middle Assendon, a stone!

 

Climbing up to Paradise Wood, well, looking back as the path was tilled over.

 

More climbing, now out of Paradise Wood  (heaven?)

 

A long hedged path up to Cowleaze Farm

 

With views

 

The hedges were somewhat overgrown with bramble, and blackberries

 

and another berry we didn’t pay attention to. It might be the red poisonous berries of black bryony, Dioscorea communis

 

Further along we crossed a field of blue flowers, best guess is Chalk Milkwort, Polygala calcarea

 

In the woods, this trunk was admired

 

The sun burnt through to backlight the leaves. Oak:

 

Beech:

 

Descending to the Thames

 

A disturbed heron

 

Fawley Court (see notes at the end)

 

Flint bridge over the footpath

 

Heading back north on the Oxfordshire Way (a long hot climb) there was this gate to nowhere

 

We passed this way in June 2021, and this was my picture of the gate then. a little dramatised perhaps, but turns out to be a perfect expression of how hot it was today.

 

There’s lots of flowers in the gallery:

• Achillea millefolium, Yarrow
• Daucus carota, Wild carrot flower and seed head
• Filipendula ulmaria, Meadowsweet
• Solidago canadensis, Canada goldenrod, with a worker Buff-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris)
• Eupatorium cannabinum, Hemp-agrimony
• Oregano, Origanum vulgare

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Fawley Court

I’m not sure how reliable the Daily Mail is as a source, but, here goes:

 

A second wind in the willows: the rebirth of a stately home 11 Sep 2016

 

Henley’s Fawley Court has certainly had an idiosyncratic life: it was the inspiration for Toad Hall, then became a wartime decoding centre and a boarding school run by Polish clergymen. New owner Aida Dellal Hersham talks about bringing the crumbling estate back from the brink. … Aida is a fairly unique person. Half Iraqi and half Iranian, she grew up in Tehran, where she was educated in a convent. She arrived in London to study just before the revolution in Iran – which drove her family into hiding – and never returned home.

 

… Now she has bought and restored Fawley Court, a Sir Christopher Wren-designed pile on the banks of the Thames, near Henley, that is considered one of England’s finest homes. The inspiration for Toad Hall in The Wind in the Willows, Fawley was requisitioned (along with Bletchley Park) as a decoding centre during the Second World War. In 1953 it was bought by the Marian Fathers, a Polish clerical congregation, to be used as a boarding school, and became a hub for the local Polish community.

 

But it fell into serious disrepair, ending up on the English Heritage at-risk register (a fate befalling only the most neglected of homes). Nonetheless, there was outcry from the community – who regarded the property as part of their heritage – when the Marian Fathers, unable to afford its upkeep, sold Fawley to Aida in 2008.

 

The main house is Grade I-listed and there are an additional 13 Grade II-listed buildings on the property; 150,000 square feet in total. Different rooms were designed by various artistic minds of the day, including architect James Wyatt and Grinling Gibbons, Wren’s master carver. Aida is particularly proud of the Gibbons ceiling she restored (it was allegedly burnt when a Polish father fell asleep while smoking).

 

Fawley was in such a state when Aida bought it that it took seven years to clean and make it safe enough to sleep in; there was no plumbing, no heating and the house was ‘weeks away from burning down’. She paid £13 million for it and has put untold millions more into bringing it back from the brink.

 

… Only one thing has marred Aida’s blissful transition to being châtelaine of this great house. A property developer, Richard Butler-Creagh, launched a lawsuit against Aida, alleging that she owed him a £5-million ‘facilitator’s fee’ for helping her buy Fawley. He was likely hoping that Aida might concede in fear. His claim was dismissed in court. ‘The judge called him delusional, but it was a terrifying time for me. We were in court for a couple of weeks. The whole thing was madness.’

The bridge near the tunnel was broken and the path was closed for some time, with no diversion [Fury at Fawley Court]. However, it was repaired at the end of 2019. [“At last, broken bridge replaced” Henley Standard].

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