Sunday Times Where Was I? Holiday Competition

Near as I can figure it this week, the most likely answers seem to me to be:

Q1. Nicholas Bacon

Q2. St Albans


The initial clues place us at the site of a mansion called 'Gorhambury House' (c18th century) west of the city of St Albans. The original or 'Old Gorhambury house' was constructed, according to the references I checked, between 1563 and 1568, for a lawyer called Nicholas Bacon, who was for a time a keeper of the great seal. His son, Francis Bacon (the polymath) inherited the house and was made attorney general c1613.

Travelling two miles or so to the south east of the mansion brings us to the Gardens of the Rose, at Chiswell green, which belong to the Royal National Rose society (founded c1876). Four miles south east of that position, next to junction 22 on the M25, lies Salisbury hall and the de Havilland Aircraft Heritage Museum, where while the theme tune for the film 633 squadron plays in your head, you can view a fine example of the 'Wooden Wonder' itself, in the form of a restored world war II Mosquito aircraft. The prototypes for these aircraft were developed at Salisbury hall.

St Albans was occupied by the Romans at one point, they called it Verulamium (possibly the name was associated with the word Verlamion, which some sources claim means 'place by the marsh'. There were two major battles fought around St Albans in the fifteenth century, one on the 22nd of May 1455 and the second on the 17th February 1461. The second battle was unsurprisingly a primate politics affair over who would control England and its resources, a Yorkist or a Lancastrian. Margaret of Anjou ( mother Isabelle, Duchess of Lorraine) brought a combined Lancastrian and Scottish army down through England to take on the team of a guy called Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. The Lancastrian Scottish force trashed most of England on their way to the venue (medieval armies also marched on their stomachs and they had to disperse them over a wide front to enable them to pillage enough food from the unsuspecting inhabitants en route). Warwick's intel on the disposition and intent of the enemy force was poor and he positioned his troops in such a way that the Lancastrians snuck their army through St Albans at night and hit them on the flank the following day, soundly defeating Warwick.

There does appear to be a medieval clock tower in St Albans, the references claim it was constructed c1403 - 1412 and it stands where the tyrannical psychopath Edward the first Longshanks, planted a cross (one of a series of twelve) to commemorate the death of his wife, Eleanor.The clock tower stands near to St Alban's cathedral which houses the bells 'Sanctus' (cast c1290) and 'Edmund' (cast c1884 in memory of Edmund lord Grimthorpe). The sources I checked claim that king Offa (grandfather Eanwulf) found the remains of St Alban, a martyr who had been whacked by the Romans. Alban told the Roman guard captain, that he wasn't there for decapitation, they'd said he hadn't done anything and could go and live on an island somewhere but it was to no avail, he fessed up that he was "only joking squire, it's decapitation", so they cut his head off making him one of the first British christian martyrs. Some sources claim that his feast day is on the 22nd of June, while others claim it's on the 20th June. The nineteenth century novel which features the city, is likely to be 'Bleak House' by Charles Dickens.


link to the competition:

Sunday Times Where Was I?