New Years Eve in a Turret

Clopton Tower, Stratford-Upon-Avon

3 January 2020

March 2019:

Dan: Has Tiffany told you about our new house?

Jack: No. Only that you found one.

Tiffany: It has rather more turrets than our current one.

Clopton Tower is the folly of Clopton House in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and last spring it was for sale. Needing a place to live in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and finding themselves free of any competition, they bought Clopton Tower.

They invited us up for New Year's Eve. If you get an invitation to sleep in a folly tower, you take it.

The train from London to Stratford-Upon-Avon passed red-roofed villages, hills with sheep, and sodden farm fields, one with ducks swimming in a puddle near the tracks.

Dan met us at the station to drive us to the house. We were on the side of town where the real people live. We didn't pass anything related to Shakespeare. The lane up the hill was so narrow that an oncoming car pulled aside to let us through. "What's the rule here?" I asked. "The side with the parking spaces pulls over," Dan explained.

Near the top of the hill, the pavement ended. Dan turned onto a dirt lane and drove to the top of the hill. On one side was the Clopton House, an estate that has been converted to apartments. On the other side was Clopton Tower. 

I noticed their view before I noticed their house.

Jack presented them with two bottles of wine that we surely would finish off tonight. I gave them a bag of Homestead Sumatran coffee beans and one of the glass ornaments I made last month.

After tea and coffee (French press! Finally a decent cuppa!), we took a look around the yard.

I was standing on a vast concrete slab. Under my feet was an empty reservoir that used to serve all of Stratford, at the bottom of the hill. Dan explained, "They used to drain it to flush the town" when things got stinky down there. Now there's a new reservoir further up the hill. Dan and Tiffany haven't decided what they'll do with this one, if anything. There are still a handful of heavy steel trap doors opening onto stairways to the bottom. "We were hoping to find a human skeleton down there. We found a badger skull."

We went back inside, where Wiggy, the 14-year-old whippet, took up residence on his sofa.

Tiffany gave us a tour of the house. "The tower is cold," she warned. "You can sleep in the guest bedroom here if you prefer." It was tempting, but I didn't want to have come all this way not to have slept in the tower.

The tower was built first. Then the next owners put a room onto it. One after another, new rooms were added on. The first room, which had its own front door, had exterior windows which now looked into the center room, which was Dan's office and also had an entry door.

The stairs to the second floor were here, too. On the other side of the office was the kitchen, with two massive stoves and an island; the refrigerator, dish washer, sink (with a restaurant-gauge faucet system), and washing machine were in a separate room behind the kitchen. On the opposite side of the kitchen was a counter with a small sink; they had it set up as their tea and coffee station. The counter there was next to a set of windows that once looked outside; now they looked into a large atrium with two doors, one to the garden and one to a breezeway with a garage on the other side.

The previous owners were an architect and a stained glass artist. He salvaged parts from old churches. Every door was Gothic style. There were altar rails in various strategic locations. Two wooden gargoyles peered down from the ends of a support beam over the two stoves. The top panes of the atrium windows were stained glass, obviously modern, with a planetary motif.

There were nooks and crannies. The nooks and crannies had their own nooks and crannies.

Tiffany pushed open a heavy door between the house and the tower. We stepped through into a modern, round kitchen.

On this side, the door was a shelf. To load the shelf would be to cut oneself off from the main house.

 A narrow spiral staircase led to the bedroom with its own modern bathroom.

Tiffany turned the heat on while we were gawping at the bedroom. In a few hours the room would be toasty enough to sleep in.

As we made our way up to the next level, the stairwell became narrower. I was walking sideways up the steps to reach the sitting room. Much of the furniture here was left by the previous owners, no surprise. Getting the stuff inside in the first place must have involved open windows. There's no way any of this would have fit in the stairwell.

Up one more flight was the door to the roof of the turret.

In the center of the turret was the skylight for the sitting room.

We went back to the yard to walk around some more.

From left to right: the garage (I think), atrium, office (with bedrooms above), and tower. In front, Wiggy.

On the other side of the fence was a dog park, which rejuvenated old Wiggy. He was enjoying his new digs what with "all those butts to sniff," Tiffany said.

I zoomed in on some trees halfway down the hill.

We hung out in the oldest room of the house, Wiggy retiring to his sofa, all of us eating salty things* and drinking wine while Dan cooked dinner.

Fireworks at midnight on New Years Eve is a new-ish tradition in England. As the hour approached, we climbed back up to the tower roof to watch them.

We had a near-360-degree view of everything that was being fired off, from the back yards of houses at the bottom of the hill, to an elaborate display from the Welcombe Hotel, and everything in between for miles around.

Out of a dozen or so pictures with my point-and-shoot camera, without a tripod, nor long exposures, I got four that resembled fireworks, none of them of the colorful ones.

By 1:00 a.m., the tower had warmed to a comfortable temperature.

In the morning there was more French press coffee, and I finally got a good buzz on. Not wanting to waste it, I asked where I could take a walk to get some good views. Dan gave me directions from the side of their house. On the way out I noticed the original front door, on the oldest section of the house, next to the turret.

I traipsed out onto the muddy fields, public paths where it seemed every dog in town was out galloping. Each owner greeted me with a hearty "Good morning!"

From the center of town, one can't see Clopton Tower. From the far end of the first field, it was plenty obvious.

I was hoping to find an entrance to the next hill over. As I got closer, though, I realized it was a golf course. Dang.

I turned up another path. At the top of the hill I could see down to the Welcombe Hotel, where the best display of last night's fireworks had come from.

I turned around and took a detour through a small patch of woods.

Then I turned back towards the house. At the entrance gate was a large mud puddle. An English sheep dog, heading for the gate, saw the puddle, stepped in, and lowered himself down to wallow in the mud. His owner knew how far back she needed to stand when the dog rose and shook himself off.

When I got back to the house I took one more picture from outside:  Tiffany had hung the ornament in one of the atrium windows.

Despite my best effort to avoid the worst of the mud, my sneakers were caked with it. I handed them to Dan, who hosed them off. This, Tiffany explained, is English winter in the countryside.

(*Twiglets and Hula Hoops. Mostly Hula Hoops.)