Pictures of Harlaxton Manor

Harlaxton Manor

Built in 1835 as the new manor house for Gregory Gregory, and now the home of Harlaxton College.


The main entrance to the Manor and its Stone Staircase leading up to the Great Hall and State Dining Room.

Pictures of the Great Hall. The college uses this room just as Gregory would have: for entertaining, dances and performances.

We've watched and participated in two kinds of traditional English/Irish dancing, listened to Rodd give a presentation prior to the presidential election, attended a piano recital and a play, and eaten a fancy dinner all in this beautiful room.

Joe and Tom like the secret passage joining the Great Hall and the State Dining Room.

The State Dining Room is now used as a classroom. This is where I attend a class on travel writing.

The Ante Room leads into the State Dining Room.





Another view of the Ante Room.

The Gold Room, a place for the ladies to gather after dinner for music and conversation.


The cedar staircase and the ceiling above it. The staircase leads up to Gregory's private rooms, now converted into rooms for faculty.





The Long Gallery ready for one of the fancy dinners we had at the beginning of the semester. Normally it is used as a classroom for the British Studies lectures that all students attend twice a week.

The 'haunted' Van der Elst room, now the faculty lounge.



The Refectory (cafeteria) where we eat all our meals.
This is a courtyard on one side of the Manor, now used as the main entrance by students, employees and our family. We cross this courtyard a dozen times a day as we come and go from the Manor for meals, to do laundry, use the faculty office, teach classes, or visit the library. The refectory is the area with the tall windows on the right side.







A view of the mile-long road leading to the Manor. There is a gate house part way that is being refurbished and renovated into two flats for faculty. Just after the gate house is a side road to the left that leads to the village of Harlaxton. This is the road I walk several times a day on the journey to and from the boys' school.

The village of Harlaxton (pop. 700) in the distance. It is a one mile walk from the Manor. This is where the boys' school is located.

The bell tower on top of the Manor rings every 15 minutes, day and night, 7 days a week. We can hear it inside our flat and at the boys' school.






The Lion Terrace and gardens behind the Manor.

A side view of the Manor with the Conservatory at the back.



One of the Conservatory's three rooms.



More lion statues at the front of the Manor.

One of two ponds in the Manor gardens.

Hedgehog Surprise! By Joe

After all of our attempts to catch a hedgehog using bait (canned dog food), we finally spotted one after parent-teacher conferences at the school on Tuesday. We walked out the school door and there it was in the parking lot. I saw something moving and ran ahead to see what it was. It was a young hedgehog, not fully grown. It was a good thing mom had the camera.

What We Did At Half-Term

We had school vacation the last week of October. It is called Half Term. Here's what we did during our vacation.

We took the train to London with Mom and visited the Natural History Museum. We heard a scientist talk about the Giant Squid they have at the museum.

Tom found £5 in London!

We played chess in the student lounge and ball games in the sports hall.

A man from the village came and taught us how to play cricket. It was really fun.

We really want to see a hedgehog so we decided to put out plates of dog food to attract a hedgehog. We put the food out when it got dark then went back later to look. We tried 2 nights but we didn't see a hedgehog.

All we got was a slug, spiders and some earwigs.

Mom took us to Grantham and we bought England soccer jerseys. Then we went to her favorite pub called the Blue Pig. It is haunted but we didn't see the ghost.

We each carved 2 pumpkins. We have Halloween decorations in our flat. We ate caramel apple pieces. For Halloween Joe was a spider web and Tom was a bull. We didn't get very much candy because most people don't give it out.But some people we know invited us to their house after trick or treating and we had chip butties. They are o.k. We also ate a lot of our candy.On the weekend we went to Durham to see the cathedral. And we went to Hadrian's Wall which the Romans built 2000 years ago. We walked along the wall and by old forts. We had to hurry back so we wouldn't miss the bus and when we got back in time we got to eat lots of Halloween candy and drink hot chocolate.