Nicola Cornick's Blog, page 45

The Lady Writing Contest!

Does the idea of a romantic short story set against the background of a historic house inspire you? If so then The Lady magazine is running a short story contest especially for you! The Lady has joined forces with Harlequin Mills & Boon and the National Trust to sponsor a writing competition and a series of creative writing workshops around the country. I am very excited to be running one of these at National Trust headquarters at Heelis, Swindon, on 28th June, when I will be sharing my top ...

House of the Week - Most Haunted!

This is East Riddlesden Hall in West Yorkshire, our last port of call on our recent canal holiday. At the end of the 18th century, the Bingley to Skipton section of the Leeds to Liverpool Canal cut right through the estate, bringing vast changes to what had up until then been largely a rural landscape and way of life. These days the house and grounds are a small oasis in the urban sprawl of Bradford.
For me East Riddlesden Hall has it all. It's small enough to live in without rattling...

Quotation of the Day!

"Only Mills and Boon can rival British intelligence," says MI5's official historian. This fascinating quotation was in The Guardian newspaper today, as related by Charlotte Higgins from the Hay Festival. She goes on to write that Christopher Andrew, who spent years as a member of of the service whilst he undertook the research for his book Defence of the Realm, claimed that the human resources consultants employed to discover the levels of job satisfaction at the British domestic...

A Meeting with a remarkable tree!

This is me, with Monty the dog, sitting in the courtyard of Skipton Castle under the yew tree that was planted in 1659 by Lady Anne Clifford to mark the repair of the castle after the English Civil War. Despite enduring a three year siege during the Civil War, Skipton is one of the most complete medieval castles in England. The yew tree stands in the Conduit Court (so called because it was where the spring water bubbled out) in the centre of the castle, surrounded by a range of early Tudor...

Literary Leanings in Kildwick - Nicola's research trip part 2!

After we picked up our narrowboat we set off westward along the Leeds to Liverpool Canal. Our first stop was at Kildwick in the area known as Craven in Yorkshire. During the 1970s I sang in the choir of the parish church here with my grandparents and I had not been back since they left when I was 11 years old. It was exactly as I remembered it and I felt a very strong sense of nostalgia.

The original Saxon church at Kildwick dated back to the 10th century. It had a heavy oak- timbered roof...

Nostalgia in Kildwick - Nicola's research trip part 2!

After we picked up our narrowboat we set off westward along the Leeds to Liverpool Canal. Our first stop was at Kildwick in the area known as Craven in Yorkshire. During the 1970s I sang in the choir of the parish church here with my grandparents and I had not been back since they left when I was 11 years old. It was exactly as I remembered it and I felt a very strong sense of nostalgia.

The original Saxon church at Kildwick dated back to the 10th century. It had a heavy oak- timbered roof...

Overwhelmed at Hardwick Hall!

This is Hardwick Hall on the border of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, a house described as "more window than wall." I'd never been to Hardwick Hall before last weekend, a shocking omission when I consider myself to be a fan of the Tudor period and of Bess of Hardwick in particular, that tough, shrewd woman who worked her way up society from her beginnings as the daughter of a poor gentry family and ended up founding a dynasty. One of the first historical novels I read was a fictional biography...

Not What You Expect to See...

Last weekend I was out on a walk in Oxfordshire near Henley-on-Thames and came across something I never expected to see in the English countryside. This. I suppose I should have learned by now to expect the unexpected - Britain is eccentric in so many ways and so to find an Indian-style obelisk in a small village is not that surprising.

This is The Maharajah's Well in the village of Stoke Row. It was a gift to the people of Stoke Row from the Maharajah of Benares, a friend of a prominent...

Flushed with success! A history of bathrooms and water closets!

A few weeks ago I bought a book called "Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and Water Closet." It struck me that sanitation is so rarely mentioned in romance books unless there's a steamy scene in the baths such as I included in The Scandals of an Innocent. Perhaps this is because bathrooms and water closets are so determinedly unromantic; functional but not quite nice to talk about. And yet the history of sanitation is fascinating and without developments in sanitation...

What Lies Beneath?

Now here is an idea for a story setting! I was reading my English Heritage magazine and came across a reference to the medieval vaulted passageways that lie beneath the City of Exeter. Apparently they were built to supply fresh drinking water to the city and are unique in the UK. These days they are a tourist attraction.

Exeter's early water supply came from springs and the Roman garrison sourced water from two local springs and brought it into the city via an aqueduct. In the Middle Ages...