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Everyone has heard about the Great Fire of London – but what about the Great Fire of Northampton…or Marlborough…or Blandford Forum? Fire has frequently wrought destruction on towns, cities and country houses, and this was particularly the case in the 17th century. Clive and John discuss why this should have been—what caused the fires, what the consequences were for the places concerned and how they were rebuilt. Northampton was a spectacular example, not only because over 80% of the town centre was destroyed but (as John has discovered from rarely seen drawings) ambitious designs were commissioned by the Earl of Northampton who was closely concerned in the town’s welfare.

A contemporary account describes the progress of the fire, as the bells of the church tolled in the heat:

All Hallows Bells jangled their last and doleful Knell, presently after the Chimes had gone Twelve in a more pleasant Tune: And soon after the wind which did flie swifter than Horsemen, carried the Fire near the Dern-Gate, at least half a Mile from the place where it began, and into St Giles-street in the East, and consumed every house therein, save one, whose end-Walls were higher than the Roof, and by them preserved.

Afterwards, however, phoenix really did arise from the ashes, thanks in part to the 1,000 tons of timber that Charles II donated towards the rebuilding of the church. When Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe and an inveterate traveller who may also have been a government spy, visited Northampton in 1724, he declared it to be the ‘handsomest and best built town in all this part of England… finely rebuilt with brick and stone, and the streets made spacious and wide’.

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The then Prince of Wales first came to Transylvania in the late 1990s on an official visit. It’s the only time he’s come on business. He fell so much under the spell of the place that he bought a house here, in one of the wooden villages, settled, many centuries ago, by Saxons from Germany. Then he acquired another property, which he has turned into a comfortable, folksy lodge. He makes a private visit every year, if he can.

Clive and John discuss King Charles III and his passion for this outpost of the former Soviet Union. What has hooked him? The sense of prelapsarian idyll, the vitality of local crafts, the unselfconscious devotion to traditional building methods, or the existence of species-rich wildflower meadows of a kind that barely exist in the UK, unless specially planted by conservationists? Or the thought that the Carpathian Forest is home to more brown bears than anywhere else in Europe? Or the fairytale character of villages like Viscri and Zalanpatak – looking like England did around 1800 - in both of which he owns homes?

All those things, no doubt. But locals don’t want roads which break the springs of your car. Nor do they always see the charm of draughty, wooden houses, which need constant attention, preferring concrete villas with all the modern amenities. Is the idyll inevitably on a collision course with the 21st century? If so, which will win?

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For the first time in the history of this podcast, Your Places or Mine has gone on location. John and Clive have been invited to The Ned's Club, the amazing complex of hospitality venues, including restaurants, hotel and private members’ club, which occupies the former head office of the Midland Bank in the City of London. This provides the podcast with an opportunity to examine Britain’s commercial centre as it evolved between the Wars. Nearly every major financial institution was being rebuilt in the 1920s, not least the Bank of England itself. Structures such as the Midland Bank head office were begun in a spirit of optimism, as Britain found its feet again and needed finance to recover from the effects of war. They were often completed in a different era, when the Depression had set in and rooms that were intended to entertain the captains of industry were instead used to put together rescue packages to stop them from going broke.

Clive and John also discuss Lutyens’s relationship with the Midland’s Chairman, Reginald McKenna, who had married Gertrude Jekyll’s niece Pamela, and their shared admiration for Sir Christopher Wren. At the end of the show, they parry questions from the audience who has joined them on one of the hottest days of the year.

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Windsor Castle has been imbued with symbolism since William the Conqueror founded it after the invasion of 1066. He took the name of Windsor from an existing Anglo-Saxon palace which stood on a different spot. On a bluff overlooking the Thames, Windsor Castle continues to play a central role in Britain’s national identity, being a great inheritance from the Middle Ages, which no one generation could have the resources or imagination to build. It has always been there, was always important, it seems to transcend time. Both a formidable stronghold and a sumptuous palace, it is a universe in itself.

No one could be better placed to describe Windsor Castle’s evolution and meaning than John Goodall, author of a mighty work of scholarship on The English Castle. In this episode of ypompod– the first of a projected two on Windsor Castle – he examines its evolution from early years until the Civil War in the mid 17th century. A key figure is Edward III, who founded the Order of the Garter in the mid 14th century as an expression of chivalric romance. He identified Windsor with King Arthur’s Camelot and gave it a round table. Tournaments or mock battles were fought in splendid costumes, displaying the luxury that was possible after the English victories over France at Crecy and Poitiers.

After the Civil War, Parliament ordered that Windsor Castle should be demolished. This did not happen. Instead Charles I’s body was taken there for burial after his execution, which only strengthened its association with monarchy.

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This week YPOMPOD is joined by Alice Loxton — History Alice to her many followers — to discuss the extraordinary series of crosses that King Edward I built in memory of his queen, Eleanor of Castile in the 1290s. Eleanor died in Lincolnshire. Her body was then carried back to London for burial, and at every place that the cortège stopped a beautiful cross was erected.

The work of the royal masons, these crosses are of astonishing quality even though some stand in what are now modest situations. The best-preserved is at Geddington in Northamptonshire, which Alice visits with Clive and John. It provides a fascinating window through which to view the Middle Ages. Alice describes her walk along the route of the crosses, the subject of her new book Eleanor, to John, a medievalist, and Clive, who used to have a cottage within the shadow of the Geddington cross.

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The American girl was a phenomenon, charming, sporty, better educated than her European counterpart. talk on a wide range of subjects. Around sixty American girls became peeresses at the turn of the 20th century. ‘We are the dollar princesses,’ ran a popular song.
Crossing the Atlantic was no longer as perilous as it had been in earlier days. Huge fortunate had been made during the expansion of the United States after the Civil War. From the 1870s, aristocrats began to experience a decline in the income from their landed estates, due to a prolonged agricultural recession. Heiresses offered an alternative income stream. Thus, in the late 1870s, Sir Thomas George Fermor-Hesketh sailed into San Francisco Bay on his yacht The Lancashire Witch, fishing for pretty girls with ‘heaps of the needful’ to maintain his two country houses in England. He landed Florence Emily Sharon, the daughter of the enormously rich, if notorious Senator Sharon, and they were married in 1880.
That marriage was not happy – nor was Consuelo Vanderbilt’s to the ither Duke of Marlborough. But May Goelet had a delightful time with the Duke of Roxburghe, whose nickname was Bumble. She liked shopping, he liked polo; their letters show that they were touchingly fond of each other. Her fortune allowed Floors Castle in Roxburgheshire to be borught up to date with electricity, central heating and décor in the style of the Ritz.

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In this summer episode of ypompod, we got to the seaside – to Ramsgate, beloved of Queen Victoria and now home to the biggest Wetherspoon’s (in an elegant neo-Greek building called the Royal Pavilion of 1913) on the face of the planet.

Five miles to the east of Ramsgate, connected by a continuous yellow carpet of sand, lies Margate, which developed as one of Britain’s first seaside resorts in the mid eighteenth century. Ramsgate did not get into its stride until after the Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815 (a street is called The Plains of Waterloo). By then, the Prince Regent had given royal approval to the seaside by building his Marine Pavilion at Brighton. In 1821, as George IV, he took a ship from Ramsgate to visit Hanover (he was cross with Dover for supporting his wife, Queen Caroline, in the couple’s tragi-comic divorce battle); an obelisk commemorates the event, as does the name of the Royal Harbour. A guidebook of 1846 pronounced that ‘of the three watering places in the Isle of Thanet, Ramsgate is considered as the most fashionable.’

Telescopes, donkey rides, German bands – Ramsgate had everything to delight the Victorian visitor. At nightfall Mr Fuller’s ‘famed marine library’, came into its own – not only a repository of books but a musical hall, a bazaar and a very mild kind of casino, where a shilling stake might win you a cake of soap, a bottle of hair oil or a wooden spade. Lumbering wooden bathing machines with a deep canvas hood at one end and a horse at the other would be trundled into the water and turned around, while drivers and horses splashed back to the beach; bathers then issued from beneath the canvas hood, which reached down to the sea.

The English seaside is now back in fashion – at least Clive thinks so. He and his family have a house in Ramsgate. He’s happy to share the secrets of the town with John and anyone else who’s listening!

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Where is Ewelme Palace? It was one of the most splendid houses in the country when it was built in the 15th century but nothing of it now remains. There are, however, some of the ancillary buildings and monuments that went with a great medieval estate. Its chatelaine Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, is remembered by one of the most beautiful tombs in the country. A granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, she became a great heiress when her first husband, the Earl of Salisbury, was killed by a cannonball while fighting in France. Her second husband, William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, with whom she built what was virtually a palace at Ewelme, does not rest beside her. Why not? Having spectacularly enriched himself while ruling England in the place of the weak-minded Henry VI, he was instrumental in losing most of the English possessions in France; fleeing England, he was caught and had his head hacked off, his remains being eventually buried in Suffolk. The 13 almsmen at Ewelme had a punishing schedule of prayers, intended to shorten the time William and Alice would spend in Purgatory. You can see why they might have thought it was necessary.

The 15th-century school house contains a primary school. The almshouses, too, are still going, softening the blow of old age. It’s true, not a stitch of the palace remains above ground, though it was of exceptional splendour and had some extraordinary features, such as an early use of cast iron. Wholly and utterly gone – but don’t despair. Ewelme was the subject of John’s doctoral thesis and there is no one who can talk about it with Clive in such fascinating and absorbing detail. Prepare to be amazed by the story of this little known and now vanished palace and the village that went with it – now one of the most beautiful in Britain.