Friday evening my sisters stepson and his girlfriend came to visit us. He had contacted me while I was in Norway, asking if they could come and visit us on Friday. What a pleasant surprise!
Lunch outside Duff House
A house for showing off success
Duff House was designed by Scottish architect William Adam (1689-1748) and is considered to be an Adam masterpiece. The house was commissioned by the wealthy businessman William Duff, Lord Braco, later 1st Earl Fife, as a family home to replace a smaller more modest residence nearby.The foundation stone was laid in 1735 and the building was finished five years later. Sadly, the owner and architect fell out over money and the house was never completed. The dispute must have been very fierce, for the owner never spent a single night in the building.
On the third floor of the house is a model of the house as designed by Adam, built by architecture students in Edinburgh. The model shows the two side wings of the house that were never built and an impressive external horseshoe stair on the north face of the building, identical to the one leading up to the main entrance on the south face. The reason for this symmetry, according to one of the guides, was that it was best to have the entrance facing south, but the family did not want to seem to be turning their backs on the town either, hence the additional entrance.From decline to serving new purposes
From early 19th century, Duff House declined as the 4th Earl (1811–57) preferred Delgatie Castle to Duff House. His taste for the high life led to debts, and gradually the contents of Duff House were sold off.After the family left Duff House in 1906, the building was rented out for various uses including a hotel, and as hospital and nursing home. From 1939 to 1946 Duff House was used as a military base, a prisoner of war camp and as an army barracks. The house was bombed in 1940, and by accident the Germans hit the part of the building where the German Prisoners of War were kept, killing two guards and several prisoners.
The revival of Duff House
After World War II, Duff House remained empty and unused, and fell into a state of disrepair. In 1956 the house was rescued by the State. Historic Scotland spent several years and £2 million refurbishing the house to bring it back to its former glory. Visitors are shown a video of the restoration work before proceeding to see the house and I was impressed by the meticulous work that had been done.Duff House does not have its original furniture and pieces of art, but has now found a new role as a country house museum.Since the 1990s, the house has played host to a very large collection of artworks on loan from The National Galleries of Scotland. Highlights include works by El Greco, Gainsborough and Raeburn. One of my favourites was Allan Ramsay's painting of Elizabeth Cunyngham, Mrs Daniel Cunyngham - you could almost feel the texture of her dress just by looking at it.
HQ for the Norwegian Brigade
During our visit to the house we got chatting to all the three guides. They were all very friendly and knowledgeable, and with few other visitors they had a lot of time to spend on us. When they found out we were Norwegian, they told us that Duff House became the HQ for Norway’s Norwegian Brigade in 1942 and the Norwegian flag had been painted on one of the walls on the third floor of the house.We were taken to a room which is normally closed to the public, where we could see the flag. On the wall opposite the flag, the Norwegian Brigade had painted the monogram H7V, wishing for Victory for King Haakon VII (Norway's king at the time). We also learned that King Haakon VII visited Duff House while he lived in Great Britian during WWII and that the Norwegian soldiers, among other things, helped train the Scottish soldiers in skiing and winter warfare.
Our concert at Duff House
Duff House has a 120-year-old Bechstein grand piano in the Great Drawing Room on the second floor. My boys and I play the piano and we were euphoric when the guides asked us if we wanted to play the beautiful, old instrument. The sound was magnificent and the boys both loved it so much they kept coming back to the instrument to play some more. By now we were probably the only visitors (it was close to closing time) and we got the full attention of the guides. I think they enjoyed our little concert too.
Another great thing about playing the grand piano was that we were allowed to take photos of us playing, which meant that we could also photograph this wonderful old instrument.
Can someone please take our orders?
On our way back home we decided to stop at a country house for dinner. The interior was late eighties, as were the decorations and the music. It seemed the clientele had started going here in the late eighties too, and it was still the same people who came here today.We didn't want to spend a lot of time looking for a place to eat and the menu looked all right, so we decided to give it a go. Once inside we were shown a table, after first having been asked if we had a booking. Apparently this was a popular place, though when we arrived there were only two other people there.
The difficult task of placing an order
After waiting for one of the four vacant waitresses to come over with the menu, we ended up walking up to them and asking for the menu. While we were deciding what to have, one of the waitresses took our drinks orders, but after our drinks had been delivered, nothing happened. The waitresses were still chatting among themselves and even though a couple of them walked past our table a few times, no one seemed eager to take our orders.
I'm not sure how long we waited, but I think I went over to the waitresses approximately 15 minutes after we all had decided what we wanted to eat. I told them we were ready to order and that the kids were really hungry so it would be great if we could order now.The truth was that my blood sugar level was really low by now, and that makes me a bit irritable. It had been almost half an hour since we walked in the door and we had not even ordered our meals.
The job description
I was told that the waitress who was busy doing something else behind the bar would take our order as soon as she was free. When I asked if maybe one of the three available waitresses could do it instead, I was told that unfortunately that was not possible as they were not authorised to do this. After further inquiries I learned that they could served the food and take orders for sweets. Fascinating!We finally managed to place our orders and the food didn't take too long to be served. Fortunately the food was quite nice, so it turned out OK in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment