[Photos] UK 04 - Arundel, Beauty and Classism

[moonvoice]

I was pretty ignorant before visiting Arundel. I'd never seen or visited a castle before outside of books and movies etc. and I mostly thought it was a museum dedicated to preserving things from times past. And so I paid the (very fucking pricey) entry fee, went in, and took my time and honestly loved it. I loved it. Opulent, filled with splendour, and then I was chatting to a volunteer and she said these words:

'The Duke of Norfolk still uses these (historically preserved) rooms to entertain, they live in another part of the castle.'

And you know, maybe if I hadn't been so sick, I would have done a cursory amount of research to realise that we were essentially the poor people paying money to the landed fucking gentry to help preserve their classist fucking monstrosity. But unfortunately, I realised when it was too late.

It was also grossly colonialist. There were so many items they'd simply taken from other countries. A stone foot from a Roman or Greek sculpture that one of the Dukes just had to have, no matter what. A sculpture of the Virgin Mary stolen from South East Asia. But of course they never use the word 'stole' though they were very open about how looting and pillaging the spoils of war is totally fine, of course.

So, Glen got a handbook re: the art and everything. And I know what most of these paintings and sculptures are and who they're by, but I'm too mad to put those details in. I don't really think it deserves it. I don't think people should be allowed to live in places like this, no matter how much money they have, and I don't think they deserve to have so much money in the first place.

Eat the rich. Fuck classism, which is still so deeply entrenched in the UK culture it's fetid (even down to 'oh they have an X accent, you know what that means' like, it's just an accent? Calm your tits, classist assholes?

SO. Presenting Arundel, the home of the Duke of Norfolk (or one of them, anyway). Splendid. Huge. Grand. Grotesque. Filled with real Van Dyck paintings etc. Established in 1067 (still keeping some of its original Norman features, including the Keep), and developed into a Gothic style later, and still a paean to the terrible ways humans treat each other in an attempt to have more than the other person. It is awe-inspiring, but horrid, too.









We had stunning weather while we were here, except towards the end, where it turned viciously dark/rainy. Glen and I managed to get home before this was a problem, thankfully.



A photo of Glen! I was stupid enough to walk up these (and many other) uneven flights of steps. Actually, walking around Arundel pretty much destroyed me. It was the first time I started loosely wondering if I needed a wheelchair. And actually more because I got a Disability discount and the woman was really helpful and said there was a shuttle service and a few other things and I was like 'I don't need that' and later I was like 'why do you always say that...'



Castles = A bitch to heat. Lots of stairs.





More stairs!



They had some rooms reconstructed to look like how they would have looked in the past. I took a lot of photos here for research actually, since I write medieval-style fae fantasy. I was kind of surprised at how many little details I'd put in my writing already that were 'confirmed' by walking through castles in the UK. It was one of those 'oh...I...got it right.' A few extra things I noticed, which is mainly to do with the narrowness of servant's corridors.



God the architecture is lovely though.



Things that people with too much money have lying around.



It was a really nice bassinet etc. though. This was in the Main Hall.



The place was weirdly accessible in some areas (especially around the exterior) and brutally inaccessible inside. All of the antique chairs had ropes on them, so you couldn't sit down, but this meant that places where you could sit between flights and flights of stairs and long corridors were few and far between, and that was often where they stationed the volunteers, and they started to look at you weirdly if you spent longer than 10 minutes dying of fatigue and pain. At one point I just said 'I've had two knee reconstructions' and this 90 year old woman just smiled in a brittle way at me and I kind of felt like crying honestly because the elderly are way better at this castle shit than I am and because of my internalised ableism it was humiliating.



The Great/Main/Whatever Hall. I could look up the name, we have the reference book, but eh.



A perfectly normal not at all opulent sled of the masses. Sleigh. Whatever.



Lots of very painstakingly carved wood.



A lot of these items were gifts from other rich people. Some were just outright looted/stolen. And some were commissioned.





I mean, of course.



Around this point of the journey I started thinking: Wait, why are there no seats? Why are there no places for people to rest? Why don't they remove just one of the goddamn antique chairs and put down a bench or something?



Remember kids, you gotta go to war to protect your (mostly stolen) riches. Never forget that.



Isn't it great to glorify hunting in a way that encouraged colonialists to drive many species to the point of extinction?



Paintings, sculptures and more of the interior in the next one. And then we'll be leaving my bitter rage behind. No place made me as furious as Arundel, mostly because I had the 'awe' reaction of a peasant when I first saw it, and then slowly realised exactly what architectural brainwashing looks like.

Comments

[citrakayah]

I see the gentry left "be a comfortable home" off their list of things that a castle should be. There's like... one room in all those pictures that doesn't look like a pain to be in. Well, the private quarters they don't show you are probably comfortable but, still.

Architecture is quite nice, though.

[moonvoice]

They definitely have their own entire wing that we're not allowed to access under any circumstances that from the looks of things is very plushly appointed. This is all museum style stuff that I imagine they close down to impress their rich guests with sometimes? But the servant's corridors that we get to walk through, are probably reserved for actual servants in the main part of the lived in castle.

(And yeah, architecture is quite nice, heh).

[cmcmck]

I was born and brought up in the shadow of a castle.

This one, indeed:



This one's no longer in the hands of the overprivileged.

[moonvoice]

Tbh I'm much more favourable of the ones that are in the hands of the state. We still visited castles, but I made a point of looking for ruins after that (though some were still owned by private parties).

[silverjackal]

Ownership of these ancient piles is a bit sticky -- while I agree with you about the unfairness of wealth distribution a lot of historical buildings are frankly better off in private hands because the state (at least at home, and I know also France) can not *afford* to own them and preserve them, and will not take them if the owners attempt to turn them over. If they get sold off privately they risk being razed or gutted (in a way that destroys the historical significance, I'm not complaining about the ones that are turned into hotels or whatever). The Russian mafia owns and has paved over the Valencia coast, for example. What was once small villages, farms, profitable estates and orange groves is now covered in gimcrack falling down tourist villas that locals can not afford to own.

Old properties can be devilishly expensive to maintain, and the tax burden for ownership can be incredibly usurious as well (which is why many of the places in private hands which are open to the public charge a steep price for access -- it's not that they're turning a profit, mostly, but hopefully breaking even on taxes and maintenance.) I don't know the details of the people who own this particular castle, but they might not be as rich as you think. Are they wealthy? Yes, especially compared to genuinely poor people -- but a great deal of the money could be tied up in property that can't readily be sold (or sold at all under inheritance rules) and which isn't worth nearly as much as it was prior to WWI. Does that mean that their inherited wealth wasn't obtained by brutally exploiting the lower classes historically? Absolutely. But their current disparity may be nothing compared to someone who has a fortune through playing sport or being a popular musician or cut throat investment banking that destroys as many lives currently as people were brutally killed by unsafe machinery during the Industrial Revolution. I grew up in spitting distance of the mega-rich (though I am myself middle class, and indeed a step down from my parents) and I know that plenty of the historical nobility are actually leveraged to their well-manicured eyebrows (and still can not give up the yacht on the Med and the bespoke suits, or they will lose their social place entirely, a fate worse than death!).

[moonvoice]

I'm sure it differs from place to place, but the Duke of Norfolk is doing great, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax subsidies, in land and farm subsidies, in calling 3/4 of the castle heritage listed Trust land, it's technically up to the state to look after a lot of the items, while he - still owning a chunk of the castle (and the land, and renting the shops and homes nearby - hundreds of acres) - gets extra subsidies on this too. I'm sure there are people struggling to look after their old properties, but the Duke of Norfolk, who the weekend prior literally accepted Prince Charles via helicopter/helipad just so they could walk around the garden together and chat (probably about offshore tax evasion) are doing just fine, and don't need the concern.

[silverjackal]

Then this Duke (or his predecessor) knows how to game the system, but it's by no means universal (my apologies, but that link infuriatingly requires a browser without ad block, I couldn't find a better source). When you're talking 200,000+ Euros a year to maintain a stately home (and not a particularly large or noteworthy one), with another 150,000 Euros in property taxes you can see where even a generous family fortune can become strained quickly. I'm not saying "pity the rich" because having to pay a high price for privilege (or for the people who are struggling to do so -- their ancestor's privilege) is an entirely different matter than struggling to stay afloat in poverty, but it's not as clear cut as someone who owns one of these things rolling in the cash and being an evil oligarch. I find it gets even more ethically sticky for me personally -- I value history, I value the preservation of these places, but... but... Is it really worthwhile taking people's hard earned tax money that could be used to feed and house the poor, and provide medical care, and good education, etc. and putting it to use preserving one of these monstrosities? (Even ruins require preservation lest they vanish entirely.) It's not an easy or straight forward thing, and I frankly haven't resolved my feelings on it myself.