As you will recall (please keep up at the back), I broke a tooth yesterday. The molar had been giving me trouble for over a year, twinging jarringly if ever I was eating anything crunchy—a sure sign of a gnasher destined for eventual crowning. I managed to get a short-notice appointment with the dentist today. She drilled out the old filling and has packed the tooth with some high-text compound that goes off like concrete and will form a basis for the crown that will protect what is left of the tooth for the rest of my born days.
So two more appointments and some expenditure to face over the next few weeks, so I consoled myself on the way back home by another detour into Marble Hill Park. I took this photo from underneath the branches of the oak tree I showed you a few days ago (Friday, 20 February).
Marble Hill House, a Palladian gem that influenced architectural taste and was a model for other houses in succeeding years, was built between 1724 and 1729 by (to use the term loosely) Henrietta Howard, estranged wife of the boorish, violent and drunken ninth Earl of Suffolk and mistress of George II, who had wooed her with interminable accounts of military campaigns. Described as "a women of reason in the Age of Reason", she enjoyed the glittering conversation of, among others, Alexander Pope and Horace Walpole, both of whom also had houses west of Marble Hill in the then fashionable village of Twickenham. The house, now owned by English Heritage and open for visiting at weekends in the generally warmer months of the year, stands across The Thames from another architectural treasure, the 17th-century Ham House, which is the property of The National Trust. Heritage heaven!
Have not been inside Marble Hill House yet. Really should...
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