Stowe House – from debtor’s folly to cathedral of learning

Posted on by Platypus Man

Back in the 18th century Stowe House – together with its associated gardens – was one of the finest estates in England, playing an important role in the development of British architecture and landscape design. But the family responsible for its creation also oversaw its spectacular decline. A lavish lifestyle brought them to the brink of ruin, and a costly visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1845 finally pushed them over the edge.

Stowe House – rear aspect

Three years later, in 1848, the estate land and house contents were sold to help pay off the family’s debts. The Times newspaper wrote this of Stowe’s owner, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos –

‘He has flung all away by extravagance and folly, and reduced his honours to the tinsel of a pauper and the bauble of a fool.’

Ouch, that sounds a bit harsh! On the other hand, the man’s debts were truly extraordinary. At the time these were reckoned to stand at almost £1.5m, equivalent to a staggering £232m (USD 317m) today. He was described by contemporaries as “the greatest debtor in the world”. Well, I guess everyone’s got to be good at something, and the dear old Duke clearly had an unsurpassed talent for spending money he didn’t have!

Top: Front aspect. Bottom: Rear aspect

In 1847 the Duke did a runner, fleeing abroad to escape his creditors. The auction of Stowe House’s contents the following year lasted 40 days, during which time anything of significant value was sold. Although the family retained ownership of the house itself, they no longer had the resources to adequately maintain it. By 1921 they had no choice but to sell up and move out.

Stowe’s future looked bleak, and demolition loomed. But at the last minute the house was saved when it was purchased and converted into a public school. For readers unfamiliar with the way we Brits make mischief with our own language, a “public school” is in fact what our North American cousins would call a “private school”, an exclusive, fee-paying, private institution. In the UK “public schools” are only open to those members of the public who are rolling in money.

The Music Room

Stowe School first opened its doors to pupils in May 1923, with 99 boys on the register. To accommodate them, rooms in the main house were refurbished and turned into classrooms and dormitories, and additional buildings were erected in the school grounds. Today 876 young people between the ages of 13 and 18 are educated at Stowe, including 374 girls. This is how the school describes itself:

“Stowe is the contemporary British independent school. We are a fully co-educational, boarding and day school. Pupils are educated in a sublime environment that produces confident young people. We emphasise academic achievement alongside other learning experiences. Balance is important, for the well-being of pupils and for maximising their academic and intellectual attainment. Stowe’s unique surroundings and unrivalled facilities help in the development of well -rounded individuals.” Source: Independent Schools Council website, retrieved 20 August 2026.

Sounds great doesn’t it, refreshingly progressive. Why wouldn’t you want your kids to attend this great cathedral of learning, spending their days in the magnificent surroundings of an 18th century architectural gem? Well, cost might be a bit of an issue…as per the webpage referenced above, one term’s boarding fee is £15,567, PLUS 20% Value Added Tax. I make that an all-in annual fee of about £56,000 (USD 76,000) per boarding pupil.

The State Dining Room

To put into context the cost of sending a young person to Stowe School, in October 2025 the Office for National Statistics quoted the UK’s annual average full-time salary to be a shade over £39,000. Clearly, therefore, Stowe and schools like it are completely out of reach for most British families.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why parents who can afford it pay handsomely to send their children to places like this. Parents want to do the best for their kids, and I applaud them for that. But let’s speak plainly here – in reality, opportunities like this are available only to a wealthy, privileged minority, thus helping to perpetuate a class system that has bedevilled English society for hundreds of years. I just hope Stowe’s pupils appreciate how fortunate they are.

From a wider perspective, the primary benefit of Stowe House being turned into a school was that it saved a magnificent building that might otherwise have been demolished, as so many grand mansions were during the period of inter-war austerity. Better still, small parts of the building are now opened up on occasions for viewing by camera-toting tourists like me and Mrs P. We enjoyed our afternoon there, glimpsing worlds that are unfamiliar to us. The best of the architecture is wonderful, although I found it difficult to imagine ever living anywhere so huge and elegant.

Left: The Blue Room. Right: The Library

Nor could I imagine what it is like to spend one’s schooldays at Stowe. I’m sure its pupils receive a high-quality education in various fields, including academic subjects and practical life skills. Let’s hope their lessons also include some simple guidance on domestic budget management, so they don’t follow in the footsteps of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. His extravagance and folly should serve as a lesson to us all, both old and young,

Ten years a blogger!

Posted on by Platypus Man

August 2026 is a significant month for me, marking as it does my tenth anniversary as a blogger. Encouraged by Mrs P, my blogging career began in 2016 with a travel blog documenting our once-in-a-lifetime trip to Tasmania.* Although I was motivated in part by a desire to capture some memories to which I could return in my dotage, it was also a conscious act of rebellion, an opportunity to express my true self at last.

Binalong Bay, on the edge of the Bay of Fires (Tasmania 2016)

You see, for nearly 15 years I’d been writing internal and public reports for a city council, accurate but anodyne prose that was totally devoid of personality. It was the kind of stuff that was painful to write, and that no sane person would ever choose to read. I knew that a travel blog could demonstrate I had more to offer. As well as showcasing the heritage, wildlife and landscape of an underrated part of Australia, writing a daily account of our adventures in Tasmania would be an opportunity to temporarily shrug off my employer’s shackles and celebrate the joy of writing for its own sake.

Tasmania, 2016

I quickly discovered that I enjoyed the process of blogging, the discipline, the creativity, the drive to produce something that was pleasurable both for me to write and for others to read. And, knowing that travel blogs are more accessible when well illustrated, it also offered the opportunity to share some of Mrs P’s excellent photos with a wider audience.

Newfoundland, 2017

Other travel blogs followed, featuring Newfoundland in 2017, Yellowstone National Park – our favourite place in the whole, wide world – in 2018, and New Zealand in 2019. Having retired from work by this stage I recognised that blogging regularly would bring some structure to my life, and help keep my brain active by filling the gaps once occupied by my council’s demanding projects and interminable written reports. And so this blog – Now I’m 64 – was born, also in 2019, and flourishes to this day.

Yellowstone National Park, 2018

Back then, I imagined that the satisfaction derived from blogging was all about the process of writing. I was wrong! Although I still get a buzz when I produce something that is well written (sadly it doesn’t happen very often!), in fact it is the relationships with other bloggers that I now value the most.

New Zealand, 2019

For me, the opportunity to share ideas and experiences with people all across the world, people I shall never meet in person but whom I regard as (virtual) friends, is now what it’s really about. You guys read, comment on and (hopefully!) enjoy my posts, I read, comment on and enjoy yours. Everyone’s a winner. Inevitably, as one gets older, horizons narrow and personal interactions become more restricted, so I am enormously grateful to the blogging community at WordPress for making my life more interesting and connected than it might otherwise be. Thank you, my friends, long may it continue.

* To celebrate the 10th anniversary of our Tasmanian travels, later in the year I’m hoping to republish a few posts first written in 2016. This will be an opportunity for me to relive some of the best moments of that trip, and for many readers of Now I’m 64 to discover them for the first time.

Sandwich terns and the miracle of migration

Posted on by Platypus Man

During a recent trip to the island of Anglesey in North Wales we were pleased to encounter a breeding colony of Sandwich terns at the Cemlyn Nature Reserve. Adult birds were rearing their chicks on little islands in a lagoon behind the beach, occasionally breaking off from parental duties to go fishing. It was such a pleasure to witness – cute little chicks exploring the islands of their birth while their parents looked on caringly or whizzed around in the skies above us, their beaks loaded down with lunch as they returned from fishing expeditions. And all around us, a cacophony of sound as the birds called out noisily to one another.

A Sandwich tern carries home a spot of lunch for its chick

Despite the blustery wind, our morning spent at Cemlyn Bay was idyllic, just the sort of thing that brings joy to a birdwatcher’s heart. But such joys are transitory. In only a few weeks from now the birds we so admired will be at the other end of the world. We’ve all heard of migration, the process by which countless species of bird move from one geographical location to another in search of food or a suitable place to raise their young, but I think we underestimate the enormity of the undertaking.

Soon the Sandwich terns of Cemlyn Bay will be heading off to the coast of west Africa. The most intrepid amongst them will make it all the way to South Africa, a journey of around 10,000km (a little over 6,000 miles). And a few months later they’ll head back again, doing the journey in reverse!

Sandwich terns nesting on an island in the lagoon behind the beach at Cemlyn Bay, Anglesey

So, in just a few short months these guys will fly around 20,000km, and in between those epic journeys they’ll spend a lot of time cruising over coastal waters on fishing expeditions. Their average lifespan of 12 years means that Sandwich terns can clock up over 250,000km (150,000 miles) in the course of their lives. What an extraordinary achievement for a creature weighing in at around 250 grams (9 ounces), and with a wingspan of roughly 100cm (39 inches).

Remember, also, that the UK plays host to four other species of tern during the summer months. One of these, the Arctic tern, breeds close to the Arctic circle, but spends northern hemisphere winters on the edge of Antarctica. Depending on the exact starting and finishing points, and the circuitous route taken in between, it is reckoned that one of these birds may fly between 71,000km and 95,000km (44,000 to 59,000 miles) over a period of 12 months. And Arctic terns are famously long-lived, with a lifespan of up to 30 years. During the course of their lifetime the oldest birds may therefore fly a distance equivalent to taking three round-trips to the moon. Eat your hearts out, NASA and SpaceX!

Left: Sandwich tern Right: Arctic tern, the world’s champion migrator in terms of distance covered (to the moon and back, 3 times!)

I find the numbers quoted above almost impossible to comprehend. Small birds, huge distances! The annual travels of Sandwich terns, Arctic terns and all their cousins leave me in no doubt that bird migration is a miracle worthy of our absolute respect. Way to go, guys.

George Washington did NOT live here, but his great-great-great-great-great grandaddy did!

Posted on by Platypus Man

The US flag flutters happily from one of the flagpoles at the front of Sulgrave Manor. In the garden is a bust of George Washington, while a portrait of the famed American Founding Father hangs in one of the rooms. What’s this all about, we wonder? Why are we celebrating the US in general, and George Washington in particular, in this remote, rural corner of the English county of Northamptonshire? Washington cannot possibly have lived here or even visited, as he never left American soil apart from a brief visit to Barbados. So just what is going on?

Sulgrave Manor dates from the mid-16th century and was built by wealthy wool merchant Lawrence Washington. Nearly one hundred years later the family fell upon hard times, having backed the losing horse (King Charles I) in the English Civil War. A new beginning was called for, prompting Colonel John Washington – the great, great grandson of Sulgrave’s founder – to emigrate to the Colony of Virginia in 1657. Colonel John clearly made a good decision, and just over 120 years later his great grandson George proved himself the ultimate embodiment of the American dream when he landed the new nation’s top job – the first ever President of the USA.

Bicentennial Washington by Avard T. Fairbanks (1897 – 1987)

So what’s the big deal? Why do visitors seek out this building, and pay handsomely for the privilege of visiting it? Sulgrave Manor is an unexceptional Tudor house. Just because a building is old it doesn’t have to be interesting. Sulgrave is not, at first glance, very interesting. Nor, indeed, at second glance either! It has undergone multiple alterations over the centuries. Neither in its architectural features nor in its contents does it bear much resemblance to the manor house Lawrence Washington commissioned around 1539. He would barely recognise it; nor, of course, would the first President of the US, because he never went there!

The Entrance Hall

Historic England, the government body responsible for ensuring that important buildings are protected by law, has given Sulgrave Manor its highest rating – Grade 1 – which indicates a building of “exceptional interest”. I’ve questioned in a previous post whether it is right, or necessary, to protect a building for posterity simply because someone famous once lived there. But in Sulgrave’s case nobody famous lived there anyway, just the remote ancestor of some guy who one day made it big on the other side of the world!

The Great Bedchamber

Delving deeper, however, we learn that there is a better explanation for the attention Sulgrave receives today. In 1911, with the centenary of the ending of the British-American War of 1812 fast approaching, former president Theodore Roosevelt proposed the creation of a permanent memorial to celebrate 100 years of peace between the two nations. Sulgrave Manor was identified as a suitable location, and a fundraising campaign was launched targeting prominent citizens and philanthropists on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1914 the British Peace Centenary Committee purchased Sulgrave at a cost of $42,500. The opening ceremony in 1921 was attended by former President Taft and members of the British Royal Family.

The Oak Parlour

So there we have it. Although the building is old and the historic links with President Washington’s ancestral family are plain to see, international friendship is fundamental to Sulgrave’s significance today. The Sulgrave Manor Trust is an independent charity with two legal objectives:

  • “To preserve Sulgrave Manor (the ancestral home of the family of George Washington, the first president of the United States of America) for the public benefit. 
  • To provide and support education in subject areas relevant to Sulgrave Manor and its historic role in the history of Anglo-American relations, and to the history, literature and institutions of the United States.”

Buried within the Sulgrave Manor website is this sentence: “To this day, Sulgrave Manor continues to serve as a memorial to Anglo-American friendship“. As someone who has enjoyed countless visits to the US, travelling to all 50 states where we were warmly welcomed by our local hosts, I am happy to support the sentiments that underpin the Sulgrave project. All relationships have their ups and downs, but the things that separate the UK and the US are trivial in comparison with those that unite us. Long may it continue.

If the Earth were to have a set of instructions…the wisdom of the Dalai Lama

Posted on by Platypus Man

The Global Birdfair is an event we attend every year, a great opportunity to hear eminent ornithologists and other conservation experts speaking on subjects that are dear to their hearts, and to ours too. One of the stand-out events at the 2026 Birdfair was a presentation by the British zoologist and author Mark Carwardine, which included an anecdote about a meeting in 1989 with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

IMAGE CREDIT: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

At the time of their meeting, Carwardine was working with novelist Douglas Adams (creator of the wonderful Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) on the BBC’s project Last Chance to See, in which the two presenters journeyed across the globe in search of some of the world’s most endangered species.

As part of the project Carwardine and Adams interviewed the Dalai Lama, hoping to gain a Buddhist perspective on nature, the environment, and humanity’s relationship with animals. Carwardine has previously spoken warmly of the Dalai Lama, describing him as one of the most intriguing and enchanting people he has ever met. It was clear from his Birdfair presentation that this encounter, which took place relatively early in his career, had a profound influence on him and helped shape how he communicates the urgent need to protect wildlife.

For the benefit of his Birdfair audience, Carwardine displayed on the screen his own brief summary of what the Dalai Lama said to him that day. It read as follows:

“If the Earth were to have a set of instructions, they’d be very simple. Much simpler than the instructions for recording a tv programme on a digital recorder, for example. Don’t poison the water – don’t chop down too many trees – don’t let the planet get too overcrowded – don’t touch the thermostat – and don’t kill all the wildlife. It really is a simple as that.”

Now that’s what I call wisdom. I have absolutely nothing to add.

She must have loved him! And maybe herself too, just a bit?

Posted on by Platypus Man

Driving along the North Wales Expressway (A55) it is impossible to miss the Marble Church. The spire is 202 feet (62m) high, dominating the skyline of the little town of Bodelwyddan and the surrounding countryside. It’s a striking sight and also an impressive example of marital devotion, the church having been commissioned by a widow in memory of her beloved husband.

The Marble Church, Boddelwyddan
The spire is visible from miles around

In 1829 Margaret Williams, the daughter of a wealthy North Wales landowner, secured her perfect marriage. The man of her dreams was Henry Peyto, the sixteenth Baron Willoughby de Broke. As such she became Lady Margaret, and went off to England to live on Henry’s estate in Warwickshire for the next 23 years.

When he died in 1852, Lady Margaret evidently decided that she’d had enough of life in the English Midlands and elected to return to her ancestral Welsh estate. However, she was in no mood to forget Henry and petitioned the Bishop of Asaph to create a separate parish for the town Bodelwyddan, complete with its own parish church to serve as a memorial to her late husband.

Marble…
…and more marble

The Bishop readily agreed, no doubt aware that the financial generosity of Lady Margaret – supported by her brother Sir Hugh Williams – would enable the construction of a landmark building. And indeed, they paid a huge sum to deliver the project. Work began in 1856, and the church was finally consecrated in 1860. The total cost was around £60,000, equivalent to about £9.5m (USD 12.7m) in today’s money.

Constructed mainly from limestone quarried in North Wales, the church is notable for containing no fewer than 14 different types of marble, including pillars of Belgian red marble, flooring of Sicilian marble, and other features fashioned from French (Languedoc) marble, Griotte marble from France and Belgium, and Kilkenny black marble from Ireland. Although it was nicknamed the “Pearl of the Vale” immediately after its construction it is no surprise that the building soon became popularly known as the Marble Church.

The pulpit is elegantly carved
The font features Sir Hugh Williams’ daughters!

Other notable features of the Marble Church include a finely carved pulpit, an artistically styled font representing two girls (Sir Hugh Williams’ daughters!) holding a shell, and some fine stained glass windows. Plainly no expense was spared in the creation of Lady Margaret’s splendid memorial to her late husband.

But, when we visited the church a few weeks ago, I did find it odd that Henry is not the star of his own memorial. The font, as we have seen, features his brother-in-law’s daughters. And although there is a portrait of Lady Margaret in the entrance to the church, there is no mention at all of Henry on the foundation plaque above the porch, which reads –

This stone was laid, July the 24th, 1856, by Margaret Willoughby de Broke, who founded, erected and endowed this Church at her own expense in the devout hope that it might tend to the glory of God.

‘Mine House shall be called a House of prayer for all people.’ Isiah 56:7

And it’s worth noting that the Church is dedicated to Saint Margaret. I admit this could be pure coincidence, but really?

I have no doubt that Lady Margaret Willoughby de Broke loved her late husband dearly. But I suspect she loved herself just a bit too.

Wordless Wednesday – Tudor

Posted on by Platypus Man

Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of Gawsworth Hall in Cheshire, which dates from approximately 1480 to 1600, in 2014.

Wordless Wednesday – Waiting for Sockeye

Posted on by Platypus Man

Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a bronze sculpture (“Waiting for Sockeye”) by Kent Ullberg at the US National Museum of Wildlife Art, Wyoming, in 2018.

The North Norfolk Railway and the romance of steam

Posted on by Platypus Man

One of the highlights of our recent visit to Norfolk was a trip on the county’s award-winning heritage railway. The North Norfolk Railway covers a distance of around 5.5 miles (9km), from the Georgian town of Holt to Sheringham, a seaside town on the North Norfolk coast. A nineteenth century poet once named the area around Sheringham as Poppyland, which was his way of paying homage to the masses of poppies that carpeted local fields. For this reason the railway is popularly known as the Poppy Line.

The countryside through which the Poppy Line passes is indeed scenic, the railway architecture is atmospheric and the historic rolling stock is eye-catching. However, I’m fairly certain the reason most people take a trip on the North Norfolk Railway is to get up close and personal with its steam locomotives.

Let’s be brutally honest for a minute – steam trains are the quintessential example of yesterday’s technology. They are noisy, smelly and dirty emitters of CO2, and as such are the very antithesis of the brave new, pollutant-free world we are trying to build in the 21st century. And yet, as the hordes of happy visitors to the Poppy Line prove, they remain massively popular. So we have to wonder, why is this? What is it that makes steam trains so popular?

It is, I suspect, because steam trains are perceived as characters in their own right. Modern transportation systems tend to be anonymous and sterile. Steam trains, however, have a life of their own, they are like “living machines”. The things that distress us about them – the noise, the smell, the pollution – are the very things that help give steam trains their distinctive personality. A journey on one of them is a massive and strangely appealing sensory experience. There’s nothing anonymous or sterile about a hissing locomotive clattering down the tracks while spewing smoke and steam into the sky.

And let’s not forget the nostalgia that steam trains evoke. We live in fraught, complex times and many of us hanker after a simpler way of life. Steam trains are the product of a bygone, simpler age and a journey on one is an invitation to wallow in nostalgia for a while. It’s romantic nonsense, of course – very few of us would actually have been happier living in the days when steam ruled supreme, in the days when fewer medical conditions were treatable, more people went hungry and nobody had a mobile phone! And were steam trains more comfortable and reliable than their modern day electric successors? I don’t think so!

But hey, escapism in small doses is not necessarily a bad thing, and the romance of steam – as served up by a journey on the North Norfolk Railway’s Poppy Line – offers the perfect opportunity to escape. I thoroughly recommend it.