ASKHAM HALL

We happily return to Askham Hall in the company of kindred spirits for three superb concerts performed in the Hall’s ancient wood-panelled spaces and nearby Chapel, stimulating lectures, readings and discussions, crackling fires, comfortable accommodation in architecturally significant rooms, first class meals and teas prepared by resident chef Richard Swale, and gentle, albeit brief, architectural walks in the Vale of Eden.

Ensconced within the thick stone walls of the 14c pele tower at Askham Hall, a Grade I medieval manor now run as an informal family-run country house hotel, we will intertwine sublime performances by gifted young musicians with a most interesting course of study. We turn our attention to the vivid diaries kept daily for seventy years by Anne Clifford (1589/90-1675), Countess of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery. The redoubtable and determined Anne Clifford spent much of her life in a brave, long and complex legal battle to obtain the rights of her inheritance after her father’s breach of an entail which stated that the Clifford estates should descend lineally to the eldest heir, whether male or female, dating back to the time of King Edward II. The gripping narrative of her early life at Skipton Castle, her lifelong fight for her legal birth-right, her challenging consecutive marriages to two unsympathetic noblemen, her later life as a powerful property owner and patron of the arts, can be set in the context of optional afternoon visits to her spectacular properties. In the centre of Penrith itself, we visit the moving memorial she erected for her greatest ally and advocate, her mother.

We will again be warmly welcomed by Lady Anne’s fellow Cumbrian, Askham Hall’s current owner, Charles Lowther, son of the 7th Earl of Lowther, whose birthday inspires the Winter Music Festival and lends a most festive atmosphere for all to enjoy.