…but if you would like to be placed on the waiting list in case of drop-outs, please let me know! We did have folks who had to drop out last year, which meant there were slots available later. I’ll be happy to keep you on the list if you’re interested. All the details of this year’s tour are at this link. Thanks!
Ever since I can remember, my parents served hot tea–not always a full afternoon tea, but definitely the steaming cupful with milk and sugar. Mom and Dad brought this tradition home with them from England on an early visit when I was little, and it stuck fast. Having grown up with “teatime,” I just naturally kept to it when I was married, and now I love to share it with my own children. Some days it’s just a hot cup during afternoon quiet time without ceremony. But, every now and again, we pull out all the stops and put on full afternoon tea. Today was such a day!
After our recent tour, sweet Amanda and Cari gave me a gift from Fortnum & Mason of loose-leaf tea, strawberry preserves, and tea biscuits. We broke these out today, enjoying the unmistakable fragrance that came when we opened the lid of the tea canister. Oh, this was going to be good! I pulled out our favorite “pink” china (a gift from my folks for my hope chest when I was 15), polished up the “Silver Beethoven” cultery, and laid out the tea tray with all we’d need.
Next, I tied on my favorite apron (a new find from the scrumptious Cath Kidston store in Bath!) and pulled out the ingredients for Suzi’s utterly delicious scones: self-rising flour, butter, sugar, salt, and buttermilk.
Let me tell you, I’ve tasted scones from all over, and Suzi’s are the best I’ve ever eaten. They have a moist texture and a slightly sweet, almost creamy taste. I’ve never had better. But don’t take my word for it! Here is Suzi’s recipe:
My mother worked in a cafe in Stratford on Avon, and was given this recipe by a French lady who ran the place. It was called “The Cobweb Tea Rooms.”
- 10 oz self-raising flour or 1 1/4 cups (You can use all-purpose flour with a raising agent – the best thing is to read the instructions on the packet for this, if you can’t get self raising flour.)
- 1.5 oz sugar (3 tablespoons)
- 1.5 oz. butter or margarine (I think about 3 tablespoons – equal weight to sugar.)
- pinch salt (don’t leave this out – it really helps.)
- about 1/2 cup sour milk or buttermilk, or milk curdled with lemon juice. Plain milk will also do.
Rub the flour, sugar, salt, and butter together until they look like breadcrumbs. Stir in the milk, very gradually, to make a firm, pliable dough. Don’t let it get too sticky. Roll out on a floured board to about 1/2″ thick. Cut in circles – I use a cutter about 2″ – 2.5″ across. Place on an ungreased baking sheet – you should get about 12 from this quantity.
Put in a hot oven, 200 degrees C (that’s about 400 degrees F), less for a fan oven, for about 10 minutes. I know this has to be different at altitude, but I don’t know by how much.
Serve with strawberry jam and thick heavy cream, or clotted cream if you can get it.
Now, I completely forgot to bring home clotted cream from England, so we had to make do today with whipped cream. If you’d like to try clotted cream (which is like a thick, rich, sweet butter), you can get it Stateside from the English Tea Store, which offers lots of exclusively British teas and treats.
Here’s our spread with the scones hot from the oven!
Care to join us?
Suzi's famous scones...
We sliced our scones in half and dolloped whipped cream on top, followed by a generous teaspoon of Fortnum & Mason’s strawberry preserves:
Absolutely delicious! We savored every bite and enjoyed the amazing tea fresh from the pot. My girls adore the ritual of a proper afternoon tea, complete with cloth napkins and beautiful silverware. I am thankful to my parents for always bringing home the best of foreign lands and for taking my siblings and me all over the world when we were growing up. It’s one thing to travel and just be a tourist; it’s another thing to study each culture you move through and come to appreciate and enjoy its own unique traditions and pastimes. Going through England and Germany as a teenager and staying for a goodish stretch in South Africa was a great gift. So was driving all over the United States and Canada and visiting in different homes. Each family has a culture, too, and it is so good to learn what is important to others and what they treasure. I feel my life is infinitely richer for the gift of “studious travel” given to me by my parents. They whetted my appetite for more. My husband and I desire to give our children this same gift as the years go by. On my next trip across the pond, I’ll be taking my daughters. I can hardly wait to share my love of England with them first-hand!
But you don’t have to hop in a plane or board a ship to dip into foreign places and learn from them. There are books galore that will take you on journeys, show you exotic ports, and even let you step into another household and see how life is lived there. Over the years, I’ve picked up books at used book stores, flea markets, and all kinds of yard sales, including lots of “coffee table” eye candy. These books have influenced my decorating style, my color choices, and even my taste in literature and food. Here’s a stack of some of my favorite (well-worn!) books on English living:
I never tire of dipping into these and enjoying a glimpse into someone else’s well-loved home. If there’s anything that describes the English house, it’s certainly “cozy.” Little nooks for reading, warm kitchens, wide hearths, groaning bookshelves–these are England to me. Pots spilling over with flowers in abundance, gardens crammed with color, roses climbing old stone walls–these, too, are England. And how much richer our lives have been from bringing these things home, whether from a trip or from the pages of a book! This last journey over with our lovely tour group was an opportunity to share the things we love with others, and we are so glad we had the opportunity to do it. It’s a pleasure we hope to repeat with our children and with friends many times in the coming years. Perhaps you’ll come along next time and drink it all in? I’d love to have you! Thank you for sharing “my” England with me through this blog and indulging my lifelong delight in all things English. Until next time….
Okay! Now it’s time to sharpen your wits and see how closely you’ve been paying attention! I’ve got four little giveaway packages from the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. Each package contains a commemorative keyring and a keepsake card celebrating the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s move to Chawton Cottage (card is blank inside and includes an envelope):
I have two of the cards on the left and two of the ones on the right, plus four keyrings. First four people to send in correct answers win a card and a keyring!
So, without further ado, here are the questions:
1. What was the first official event of the 2009 London Historical Costume Tour?
2. Which two ladies got to serve as models at Shakespeare’s Globe for “Ophelia’s” costume?
3. Which famous 19th-century church did my family attend the first Sunday?
4. What was our first stop on Monday the 14th?
5. Which play did we see at Shakespeare’s Globe Monday night?
6. Who got to model Cathy Hay’s fabulous oak leaf gown?
7. What was the name of the special 1950s exhibit at Kensington Palace?
8. Who was our guest speaker at the Fan Museum’s Orangerie on Wednesday?
9. Name the two places we stopped to tour on our way to Bath.
10. What was the name of the group that performed Sunday night in Bath?
11. Name one BBC miniseries that used Lacock Village as a location.
12. Name two of the inns/pubs in Lacock Village.
Okay, that’s it! The first four people to send in correct answers will win! (Please don’t post your answers in the comments — be sure to use the feedback form.) I’ll announce them here on the blog as soon as I have them. 
Well, we are here in New York, a little bleary eyed, as it is 3:45 a.m. by our body clocks! We should be home tomorrow evening if all goes well. Give me a couple of days to get over jet lag and get the rest of the pictures from Lindsay, and I’ll blog about the rest of the trip. It was peachy!
The beautiful courtyard garden at the Fan Museum in Greenwich...
The weather is glorious, South Kensington is lovely, and we’re all determined to stay up and beat jet lag! 
I’ll post pictures later when I’ve found all my cords to download the camera. It’s been a fun morning, and the afternoon promises to be a delight as well. Tomorrow we go to Shakespeare’s Globe! I look forward to sharing all the fun details as we leap into our itinerary.
Well, we fly out of New York tomorrow night, so we’re in the last mad dash of packing and preparing here in Alabama. I look forward to sharing this trip with everyone who is following from Facebook and Twitter and my site’s newsletter. Thanks for your kind comments and for tagging along virtually!
Warmly,
Jennie
My husband stopped in London on his way back from Sudan in late March and visited Brompton with WD-40 in hand. After thoroughly spraying the lock, the key turned as nicely as you please, and he got in!
He managed to shoot a short video of the crypt’s interior. If I can get it formatted properly, I’ll share it here. The good news was that he discovered the missing glass panel from the bottom of the door back behind one of the columns next to the altar table. It had not broken after all, accounting for the lack of shattered glass on the floor of the tomb. Apparently, it just came loose and fell off. Someone years ago must have stowed it safely in the back so it wouldn’t be broken. Matt doesn’t think it will be too hard to fix, so that might be a future project on another trip.
At any rate, it was great to have a happy ending to the crypt key story, and I thought you’d enjoy the update.
For years I’ve had requests from my pattern customers to lead a historical costuming tour to England. As a busy homeschooling mom, I just didn’t see that on the near horizon. But last year, my husband brought it up and said there’d probably never be a better time to go — one silver lining in the black cloud of a failing economy is the falling of travel costs and a better exchange rate for the American dollar. We also now have lots of older children who help run the household and need little help with their schooling, so my husband urged me to consider going in the fall of 2009.
I started researching the options and was surprised to find what an amazing, cost-effective travel package I could work out. My husband enthusiastically cheered me on, urging me to post on my message forum to see if there was enough interest to get together a good-sized group. Lo and behold, three days after posting, I had a completely full tour list and a waiting list to boot!
So this fall, I’ll be leading a group of 24 enthusiastic participants for a week in London. Half the participants will be staying on for a three-day extension to Bath for the opening of the Jane Austen Festival. My oldest son will be accompanying me as my assistant (and a very excited first-time visitor to Great Britain!).
To help cement all the items on the itinerary and make sure everything runs smoothly, I’m popping across the pond on March 5th with my baby, Benjamin, and our sweet 15-year-old neighbor, who will serve as my helper. We’ll be in London four days to meet with curators, hotel managers, and such. On the Saturday, we’ll take the train over to Bath to meet with folks there. It will be a whirlwind journey there and back, but I’ll be posting pictures here as often as I have WiFi access so my fall tour participants can see what’s coming in five months’ time!
Stay tuned for lots of fun images!
After the wonderful tour of the castle (and a quick stop in the gift shop for treats for my children!), we headed back down the hill toward the Cathedral. Through a side door, you enter the ruins of the old abbey, seen in the photo at left. There is a beautiful garden through the lower archway, complete with splendid English roses. Somehow we didn’t manage photos of those, but we were in a hurry for tea and a little rest, so we continued across the broad, green lawn into the cozy little tea room.
Yes, they do serve tea on plastic trays in England…
We knew we wanted to see the two big used bookshops in Rochester before heading back to London, but we weren’t sure where to start. The main street isn’t very long, so we wandered back down it until we stumbled across the first place, a little hole in the wall absolutely crammed to the ceiling with books. The proprietor let us browse, and we found many bargains (100-year-old Dickens’ editions for a pound!). Purchases in hand, we moved on down the street to an OxFam shop–akin to an American Goodwill. There were a few books, but nothing really tempted us there. We were beginning to wonder if we’d find the big store our hostess had told us about when we bumped into it at the end of the street. We entered two stories of antique book bliss! I found several volumes of 19th-century adventure stories for my son and regretfully walked away from expensive, leather-bound editions of favorite classics. It was dreamy just to browse!
But time marched on, and we knew we had to catch the bus back to our train to make it to London before it was too late. We bade a fond farewell to lovely Rochester and enjoyed a drowsy journey back to London, looking over our literary treasures and storing up memories.
Next morning we attended church with my friends in Dulwich, then joined them for lunch in their home and a restful afternoon of visiting and (of course!) tea:
Sitting with our wonderful hostess, Sarah J.
Lindsay and Sarah sip and rest.
Enjoying a marvelous afternoon.
Here are Sarah and Lindsay with our friends Carol and Dawn. The lovely young lady between Sarah and Lindsay was staying with our host family as a helper after the birth of their baby. A native of Australia, she was a delight to get to know!
Next morning the girls and I said our good-byes and headed to Heathrow, and I posed for a last-minute picture with Dawn, Carol and Suzi:
The only other funny incident I must record is that Lindsay decided to wear flip-flops to the airport and ended up losing one between the tube and the station platform — it does say, “Mind the Gap” everywhere you look, and Lindsay’s flip-flop went straight down, never to be seen again. She spent the rest of the ride going through her suitcase for another pair of shoes! It really does pay to wear a good, comfy, sturdy pair of shoes for all journeys through London’s transport system.
At any rate, we did make it to our gate at Heathrow (after one wrong tube choice and long check-in lines) and flew back safe and sound to the US. And all of us look forward to future adventures in Great Britain!
I’ve managed to let months slip by without posting the final days of our 2007 trip. I promise to bug Lindsay for the Saturday pictures so I can finish up! It is fun to look back and remember the trip highlights. My dear husband will be stopping through London on his way back from Africa later this month, and he plans to hit some of the same sights we enjoyed, including the British Museum! Fun!