The Temple of Diana is one of the highlights of our visitors’ route out of the Highclere estate. Coming out of the car park and down the driveway, you are directed left through some trees and over a small bridge which guards the entrance to Dunsmere Lake. A little further along, on a rise as the road swings to the right, is the pillared circular folly.
Its situation invites you to look out towards the hills or across the nearer prospects of a seemingly never ending lake carefully designed by Capability Brown. It is an enchanting spot for a picnic and, if we are not careful, we can develop traffic problems as guests stop to take photos.
We should not complain however because this is the essence of a folly – a punctuation point to highlight a particular view or landscape just as a temple is a meeting place designed to bring people together.
For me, the word temple always brings to mind the collection of poems by George Herbert in the 16th century. Like many, he had a challenged life both in terms of health and financial resources and his attempts to manage his disappointments and travails shine through in his writing. The poems are intense and beautiful as he tries to find his vocation and his political and religious path: there is an inherent restlessness and a fear and desire to overcome it.
One of them in particular has been turning round in my mind in recent days. It is about being a tenant of this world, something that resonates particularly with the work we do at Highclere. Geordie and I walk under the trees, create new paths and plant anew knowing we are just tenants here for our lifetime; following in others’ footsteps and hopefully paving the way for others in the future. It is both our job and our desire to ensure that there are still beautiful trees for others to admire in a century’s time, that the land remains nurtured and the soil rich enough to farm.
Over the centuries, like many other British homes, Highclere has been endlessly adapted, recycled if you like, to meet the requirements of the times whilst maintaining the long view. This endless willingness on the part of 1300 years of “curators” to constantly invest in the well-being and future of the estate is the secret of its survival over so many centuries.
It is this thought that underlies most of my book “Seasons at Highclere” and which inspired our upcoming Highclere Festival (9th & 10th October). This is designed to be a weekend of reflection, hence our logo, and we will be joined by some amazing speakers. Where should we invest for the future, how can we support our health, how should we farm and eat well and what could help us find peace and strengthen our mental resources? Because we do need a plan. We all live on this dearly loved world and we need to negotiate both between ourselves and with ourselves about how we are going to nurture it because there isn’t another one.
Of course there will be fun as well. The Highclere guides are dressing up, re-enactors will be in character, the Highclere pigs will make an appearance, Luis will bring light and life to the cafes and cocktail bar and my husband will have a very diverse panel with whom to chat about farming, food and cooking. Happy times!
Instagram
I love that folly the most, and the history.
fondly Jenny
It weather the storms!
What fun should be had with
The pigs.
We will have t see which pigs can make an appeareance – will it be Lady Violet ? Or Mary?
I’ll tell Michelle this. Love Auntie Trish
Lady Carnarvon lovely pictures of Tenants and you lord Carnarvon have lovely weekend and thank you for the email and love to highcelere castle
Thank you, Lady Carnarvon, for yet another thoughtful and beautifully written reflection. You so expertly capture moments and essences and brilliantly summarize the same. Thank you, too, for the encouragement that your words in this week’s news provide. Wishing you and Lord Carnarvon the very best.
Thank you – it is something of broken world
Is your husband’s name also George Herbert ??
Looking forward to our trip to England as soon as it is possible for us to travel .
This is definitely on our list of things that are a “ must” to see.
Your photos and way of writing about it makes it feel like we are there!!
Regards
Susan
I wish we were in England and could attend your festival! And thank you for the true a poignant words about your stewardship of High-level, which indeed also applies fully to all of us in our places on this planet. You pics are lovely!
Thank you
Hello from America,
Thank you for keeping the land maintained, but thank you also for tending this blog. In such a tumultuous world it’s a lovely and peaceful escape. May I ask, was the temple used in the 2005 Pride & Prejudice film with Matthew Macfadyen and Kiera Knightly?
Thank you, again,
Anna Sciscente
I love Pride and Prejudice, but sadly not!
Apologies! Auto-correct thought it knew more about what I wanted to write than I did! Here is the correct comment as written:
I wish we were in England and could attend your festival! And thank you for the true and poignant words about your stewardship of Highclere, which indeed also applies fully to all of us in our places on this planet. You pics are lovely!
Sounds Magical and real.
Wish I could be there but there will be a Blog about it! Enjoy! Lisa D, a kindred spirit
It will be great weekend!
Thanks for bringing Highclere to us to start the week! Question: Was that folly used in filming Pride and Prejudice?
Thank you – it was not but, it was part of a Downton scene!
Dear Lady Carnarvon,
I love that folly but I love your sense of stewardship more. I’d like to respond with a quote from my home state of Maineade by Ralph Gould when he was in his 80s. I feel it will resonate!
“A lot of people tell me I’m a foolish old man, grafting apple trees for fruit I will not live to enjoy. I have enjoyed many long deceased mens’ good apples and I mean to leave a great plenty to those who come after me!”
Entirely agree with your quote
Today is a very special day for me. After a break of 19 months, I will finally be returning to work. About a year ago, I went in for my yearly check-up. However it was not to be a good report. In discussions with my doctor, he devised a plan for me to improve my health. This involved food and its preparation, exercise and medication. Your blog mentions supporting our health and eating well. I have been doing this for a year now and the results are wonderful. While it is true that our world is the only one we have, our bodies and our lives are only one also. Maybe we each need a personal folly, not a building or a temple, but a focus, on our lives, on our health and of course on our world. Happy day everyone, hope it is the very best one ever.
So pleased your health has improved
Dear Lady Carnarvon,
You continue to inspire with your wisdom, thoughts, reflections and questions. I agree that we should always keep in mind our ability to ensure the healthy survival of our magnificent planet, and all it’s people and creatures.
All good luck with the upcoming weekend events- they sound absolutely wonderful. I look forward to returning to Highclere…how well I remember the view of Diana’s Folly when leaving the grounds. Stunning beauty.
Be well!
Best regards,
Charlotte Merriam Cole
It is a beautiful site when leaving Highclere Castle
I look forward to your Monday writings, A great way to start the week as I sit with my coffee.
I hope some day to see your beautiful Highclere. Enjoy the festival.
T
Thirteen hundred years of stewardship is beautiful and awesome! In the U.S. we are amazed by a one hundred year old farm house. Another kindred spirit “across the pond.”
It must be wonderful to sit in a folly gazing across beautiful land such as yours. The fall festival sounds wonderful and I know you must be glad to be able to do such activities after this last year and a half. Enjoy this happy event!
I think the long view helps – buy you love on an old country
Lady Carnarvon,
Thank you for an amazingly inspirational post. In these trying times, it is good to reflect on things, share information and wisdom. We are one Earth, and truly just tenants for our time here. We need to remember this. Thank you for the reminder. Wish I could attend your festival! Hope it is wonderful!
Thank you
Greetings again Lady Carnarvon and thank you for another lovely and informative post. So glad to see in your lovely photos that the autumn weather looks as though it has been fabulous thus far as the fields, gardens and sky looks brilliant. I too loved seeing Diana’s Folly on my way out but sad that I had to leave Highclere as it is such a wonderful and beautiful historical monument to spend any time of day with. Congratulations to you and Lord Carnarvon for the ability to carry on and actually improve so much of Highclere over the years you have been tenants, quite a weight upon your shoulders. Take care going forward and best of luck with your big October weekend event approaching, sounds lovely.
Thank you for bringing George Herbert to mind in relation to our being tenants here on earth and your relationship with Highclere. I love that poem, had it for memory once. (Do have a book of his poems, but did have to buy a volume of John Clare to whom you referred to two months ago!) Your connections made with poems, words, daily life at Highclere and your readers’ thoughts always help start my week on a high note. And then I must now listen to Ralph Vaughn Williams’ settings of four Herbert’s poems. You led me to something enlightening again, thank you!
I know a few of the poems off by heart – the cadence and words are beautiful
Lady Carnarvon,
Your mind has an immense amount of imagination, historical facts, and analysis of history and its relationship to our present lives. You also bring out the best, and remind us of beauty in nature and that created by man. So glad Highclere Castle was in someone’s imagination hundreds of years ago, and that you are happy to share that with us.
I get to enjoy my memories of my visit to Highclere – they remind me of what I saw, and what I din’t have a chance to see!
Thank you!!!
Martha G.
It would be lovely if you could return to Highclere Castle to catch up on what you did not see!
I would so like to do that, and plan to! Thanks!
Dear Lady Carnarvon,
Beautifully written as always.
Looking forward to seeing it in person. Thank You .
Kind Regards,
Robert
Beautiful! Can you go inside the Temple of Diana? If so, what’s there? Thank you!
It is amazing but not yet one we have restored
How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing …
Beautiful poetry, thank you for reminding me of George Herbert’s inspiring words and for your inspiring words which are beautiful and warming as always.
Jane
Thank you!
Dear Lady Carnarvon,
Your book “Seasons at Highclere” is on its way. I’ll be able to get a real sense of the festival. It sounds wonderful!
Enjoy,
Pam
Lady Carnarvon,
I love your blog and everything you write about. Since our trip to Highclere in 2019 I follow you faithfully. I am obsessed with the castle and all the history. We hope to return one day and have the pleasure of meeting you. I especially love all your pictures of the pups. We just lost one of our pups after 16 years. it warms my heart to see you with all of yours. They are all so very special. Thank you for being such a wonderful pup parent.
Mimi
Dogs are our best friends
Lady Carnarvon,
I know nothing of how you met your husband, fell in love, and married. However, each Monday as I read your blog posts, I have the exact same thought: What a profound blessing that a writer with your keen ability to see, understand, and share your thoughts about so many different aspects of life at Highclere Castle — and the daily responsibilities that come with those supreme joys.
Could it have been fate that placed a writer with your powers of observation and the ability to beautifully express your insights AND chronicle the accomplishments of previous Ladies of Highclere?
Or perhaps a higher power placed you in your then future husband’s path?
Or maybe it was simply Cupid.
However it happened, I’m glad that at this time in the world’s history, you are exactly where you are!
Thank you for sharing pieces of yourself and your life at Highclere.
~ Bon in ‘Bama
I think we are lucky to have met each other – like all things in life the strength is in team work
Lady Carnarvon,
It sounds like Highclere could be a retreat, a place to go to be revived and restored! It would be fun to be able to stay and reflect for a while in the area.
MY DEAR LADY CARNARVON,
GOOD EVENING MILADY, VERY WARM IN RIO CLARO BRAZIL 32 °CELCIUS –SPRING.
HAPPY TIMES, WITHOUT WW, HAPPY TIMES, “PEACE BEING WITH A SMILE ” MOTHER TERESA, YOUR SMILE IN INSTAGRAM TODAY IS WONDERFUL MY LADY.
BEAUTIFUL DAY IN HIGHCLERE CASTLE TODAY. WOW. REMENBERING MY COUNTRY –BRAZIL.
VILLA ALEMÃ
RIO CLARO – SP
BRAZIL
We just did our fifth visit to Highclere. Each time it is completely different, and we explore different paths. Our family has come to love it, firstly because of Downton Abbey, but once there it quickly becomes it’s own place with it’s true history and beauty. Of course it helps that our hosts are so lovely. Thank you again for such a lovely visit. This time we explored the rose gardens and got the see the Airman!
How incredibly kind thank you
Diana’s Temple is lovely. Are there any plans to restore it? Prints in the gatehouse suggest that the temple was meant to be a place of residence. Was that plan ever enacted in the history of Highclere?
I hope your festival exceeds your expectations.
The building is stable and we have restored roof, urns, and stonework. It is a staged process!
Dear Lady Carnarvon:
Thank you for your insightful and “poetic” Monday blog. Nice pictures of the Castle’s grounds and the Temple of Diana.
I am looking forward to any online viewing you may have of the Fall Festival next month and listening to Lord Carnarvon’s guest(s) speak.
Until then, have a good week.
Perpetua Crawford
Thank you and you too Perpetua
Sounds like a fun and interesting time, the first weeks of October are usually so nice.
I am so looking forward to seeing you all on the 14th. I this will be my first trip over in the Autumn.
It is beautiful here!
Lady Carnarvon, i am always love your writings but the part you wrote, “It is both our job and our desire to ensure that there are still beautiful trees for others to admire in a century’s time, that the land remains nurtured and the soil rich enough to farm.” has truly inspired me to take this to heart here in my little part of the world. Once again your words impact my life!
thank you.
Thank you
Dear Lady Carnarvon:
My husband and I had the immense pleasure of staying at the London Lodge in 2017. I would walk to Diana’s Temple in the mornings. Rain and all!! Loved it very much one of my dreams come true
We happened to watch Pride and Prejudice over the weekend, starring Keira Knightley, and are wondering if one of the scenes were filmed at Diana’s Temple?
Kindly,
Su-Lyn Menzies Ortiz
It is a special place – it was not filmed there but it is available for filming!
Reading your lovely article reminded me of the beautiful day I spent at your glorious estate in April, 2019. Seeing your magnificent castle, Egyptian treasures and superb grounds was the nearest thing to heaven for me. Thank you both so much for all your efforts in preserving this rich piece of English history and sharing it with the rest of the world. (Michele from Sydney, Australia).
Dear Lady Carnarvon,
I hope you, your family and staff and all members of the ‘Monday Family’ are well.
I hadn’t realised that the Temple on exiting Highclere was called the ‘Temple of Diana’. I assume that it is named as such for its position on the Estate and because in Roman Mythology, Diana (aka Artemis in Greek mythological) was primarily considered a patroness of not only the Moon but also the countryside, hunters and crossroads.
It is my understanding that a restaurant in Rome claims that one of its walls is part of the old Temple to Diana. I have not been to that restaurant but I have visited the ruins of the Temple to Artemis in Ephesus.
The NASA project to land “the first woman and the next man” on the moon, that is scheduled for 2024, is called ‘The Artemis Project’.
I take this opportunity to wish you well with the forthcoming ‘Highclere Festival’. It would be wonderful to be there. (In comparison Sydney will still be in lockdown until mid-October.). Have a wonderful time and best wishes for every success.
Yours faithfully,
Jeffery Sewell
Dear Lady Carnarvon,
I have deliberately written this second entry because I could not resist commenting on your clever (and undoubtedly intentional) placement of the portraiture of George Herbert over the cover of his book of poems. It’s sub-title certainly carries a different connotation in the mind of most modern day readers as compared to what was intended by the author.
I have read that the English term in its religious sense was part of an Augustinian discourse associated with Puritan teaching on prayer.
Augustine used the word ‘jaculatas’(“darted”) to describe the prayer style of the desert fathers when they had no time to use formal set prayers – ie being very brief or sudden.
Elnathan Parr in his 1618 treatise “Abba Father” had felt the need to define “the Prayers called Eiaculations”: they are not necessarily verbal, but a “sudden lifting up of the heart to God, from manifold occasions occuring every day.”
“Aspirational prayer” probably would be the preferred term to use in modern times, if the book was being published today.
I conclude by pondering how many readers of this Blog will now carry out a ‘google search’ to ascertain the full title of George Herbert’s book of poems?
Have a lovely week.
Yours faithfully,
Jeffery Sewell
Thank you!
I woke up in the middle of the night so sad that I didn’t receive your email. Then I realized it was Sunday night, not Monday. I was so happy to read this! I look forward to them every week. I have also listened to all your Podcasts. You have such entertaining guests! Thank you and Geordie for taking care of a national treasure.
Thank you
Lovely blog, as always, and I would love to be at Highclere for the Festival (and any other time!).
But alas we cannot travel from Australia just yet but the lights are coming on slowly and places opening up. At least I know Highclere and it’s wonderful tenants will always be there in my lifetime.
I must look up George Herbert and his poems.
Thank you Lady Carnarvon for another beautiful blog and inspirational thoughts. Reading your blogs is a wonderful way to start off a new week.. Sending you all the best wishes for a very successful Festival. Very timely topics for the world today. Best regards to you and Lord Carnarvon xx
Dear Lady Carnarvon
How beautifully you write. I love being immersed in your storytelling. I only hope that one day I can travel from Australia to visit your beautiful sanctuary. Thank you.
Judy
Lady Carnarvon, The Temple of Diana is so very beautiful and stands so proudly on the estate. That says it all. Cheryl.
It is a beautiful folly
Dear Lady Carnarvon,
I love the folly indeed. Sounds fun, dressing up with costumes, wigs and things. Wish I could be there.
And Capibility Brown’s designs are as lovely as always.
You are truly blessed to have the privilege of being surrounded by lovely landscapes.
Blessings,
Phyllis Simpson, USA
Lady Carnarvon,
Thank you for the lovely blog and beautiful images of green and blue of the highclere sky, as we go through these challenging times.
Lady Carnarvon, lovely to see the Temple of Diana, which I would like to think is in honour of me but I fear not. Love your words about nurturing our environment and working together to love and protect our earth. Diana Harris
Dear Lady Carnarvon,
Again you inspire and gift us with your insights to both Highclere and life itself. Highclere is lucky to have you and Lord Carnarvon as the stewards (tenants) of this precious and wonderous estate.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and estate with all of us. You brighten my week every morning. Will get there eventually! The fall festival sounds amazing and our foliage is in the midst of change for the season.
Fondest thoughts to you and Lord Carnarvon throughout yet another season!
Iris B
MY DEAR LADY CARNARVON,
GOOD MORNING FROM BRAZIL (RIO CLARO )18° CELSIUS
IT’S A SPRING DAY IN MY CITY THE BIRDS SINGING MILADY AND I AM READING THE POEM OF JOHN KEATS:” AUTUMN.” THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL WORDS. I REMENBERING ,IN YOUR COUNTRY IS AUTUMN, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SEASONS, COLOURS, FOG AND THE CHRISTMAS IS COMING. …
BEST BRAZILIAN WISHES TO HIGHCLERE CASTLE.
VILLA ALEMÃ
RIO CLARO – SP
BRAZIL
Thank you!