Churchill

After Stratford-On-Avon we decided to go visit Blenheim Palace – the home of the Dukes of Marlborough and birthplace of Winston Churchill whose grandfather was the 7th Duke of Marlborough.

The Palace is huge and this is just one portion of it. It is well worth visiting for anyone up near Oxford.

Inside they have an amazing collection of artworks – portraits and tapestries on the ground floor, plus lots of Churchill memobilia. You can easily spend an hour just looking around that floor. And in their Library they have the most magnificant collection of vintage books – including what appears to be an original “Wealth of Nations”. I could happily spend years in their library.

Upstairs they have a digital display telling the history of the eleven Dukes of Marlborough which is a bit tacky, but still quite interesting.

Some rather nice fountains out the back.

Their lawns would be ideal for a very aggressive game of Croquet!

This is in the Secret Garden, and you can see why they kept it secret for so long – it is a wonderfully tranquil place – so tranquil, German Girl didn’t even have her eyes open for the photo!

As we drove out of Blenheim Palace we saw a small sign saying St Martin’s Church and the grave of Churchill was to our right. Now there are monuments to Churchill everywhere but I had never heard about where he was buried and was intrigued it was up here not in St Pauls or Westminister Abbey like so many other British heroes. So we set out to find it.

We worked out the church was in Bladon. But how to get to it proved difficult. There was no big flashing signs. Really no signs at all, and no car parks. Eventually I just had to illegally park the car off the side of the main road and we went up a small path to St Martin’s which is a pretty small church – a maximum of 100 worshippers I would say.

And next to the small church with a plain stone over the grave is the final resting place of the man voted the greatest Brit of the last 1,000 years. No list of offices and achievements – just his name and that of his beloved Clemmie.

Other members of the Churchill family buried next to Winston. As I said, it is not at all promoted and there was no one else there when we were there. Was somewhat fitting to see both his birthplace and his burial place in the same day.