The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford and Cromer Road: Sport and history on an East Anglian turnpikeHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford and Cromer Road: Sport and history on an East Anglian turnpike
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
It is a handsome, although inhospitable village that has grown up at the
bidding of the master of millions whose coroneted “I” stares you out of
countenance from every red-brick cottage. Architectural taste is evident
in the schools, the beautiful estate office, the village hall, the post
office, and the village in general. All around, on the warrens, the
waterless hills are dotted with wells, and the whole estate provided
with the most exquisitely steam-rolled roads, and cared for as no one
ever could have cared for it before. Yet it is not unpleasing to one who
has experienced the courtesy of the Maharajah in years bygone to find
that the memory of the “Black Prince,” as he was here affectionately
known, is still cherished at Elveden, even though it is now owned by
the, as far as mere lucre goes, more princely prince of black beer.
Elveden Park forms one side of the village street, and through the trees
the golden glitter of pinnacles can be seen, leading the stranger to
think his eyes have rested on the Hall. But those are merely the
stables, where the horses are housed in a manner that might almost have
contented Heliogabalus. The stables at Sandringham are not so lavish,
but then, of course, they belong merely to the King. The Hall itself is
not externally so flamboyant, and is in essentials the staid Italian
Renaissance of some years ago. But once within, it is a gorgeous display
of wealth rejoicing in itself and attempting feats resembling the
painting of the lily and the gilding of refined gold. You pass from an
oak-panelled entrance hall, with doors barbarically sheathed in
glittering patterned metal and flanked by passages whose coved ceilings
are covered with Renaissance designs in raised plaster, into a domed
central hall of pure white marble, designed in the Indian style and most
elaborately carved and fretted in that extravagant Oriental taste. It is
like coming from the Hotel Metropole into a first-class mausoleum, and
when you enter you cannot help thinking you are dead and buried and laid
to rest in an inferior copy of the Taj Mahal. This extravagant feature,
newly completed, is said to have cost £10,000.
As one leaves the Park the lions of Lahore are noticed, still decorating
the stone gateways. Near by is Elveden church, the only remaining
vestige of the old village: a humble little place, with mural monument
and medallion portrait of Admiral Keppel and an east window to the
memory of the Maharajah Duleep Singh and Bamba, his wife.
So we will leave Elveden, cut adrift, save in this sole respect, from
old times. Useless to look for the “Hare and Hounds” posting-house,
where the post-chaises changed horses, and equally fruitless to seek the
old toll-house, the scene on October 25th, 1825, of an accident to the
“Magnet” coach, on its way from London to Norwich, when the leaders
shied as they were passing through the gate and the coach was upset,
with the result that an outside passenger, a widow from Hargham, was
killed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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