Dinner at the Archbishop’s
Sunday, 12 June, 2005
This is the first time I had ever been to Bishopscourt. I was lucky to have Jo in the car with me—she navigated so we got there in good time and in one piece. Christine had just come down to open the gates and, as we drove in, I couldn't help but think, “Wow!” Unfortunately I don't have any pictures (I didn't bring my camera—is it rude to bring one's camera to the Archbishop's house for dinner?—but anyway it probably isn't appropriate to put pictures of someone else's house on the web, no matter how pretty. Quick googling, however, has revealed some pencil sketches on the old Anglican Media site).
It was just a small party of us that evening—just the girls in our women's chaplaincy group. We all felt like something out of Pride & Prejudice—certainly some of the rooms reinforced that view. We had a scrumptious dinner in a beautiful dining room, served by the guy who comes to help out whenever Christine has company. He humoured the various photo-taking and frivolity that went on, and then served us tea, coffee and nougat afterwards. Then Christine took us on a tour of the place and we couldn't help gawking at the ceilings (so ornate and marvellous!); pretending to be penitent pilgrims praying in the pews in the chapel (Loretta played the theme to The Simpsons on the organ); photographing ourselves posing like Christine's portrait; pretending to be Rapunzel on the balcony; running our hands over the door arches ... we couldn't help acting like little children. I kept thinking how much Deb would enjoy seeing it (despite it being Anglican).
To me, the best part of the house was Peter's study (which was almost as nice as John Woodhouse's). There were bookshelves all around the walls, bay windows that faced north, two chairs where one could have a cup of tea and chat to a friend, and a massive L-shaped desk. I long for a study like that!
Christine also gave us a bit of history about the house. It used to belong to Thomas Mort who owned quite a bit of land in NSW—up and down the coast and elsewhere. Mortdale, which I always thought was a funny name because it means “Valley of Death”, is actually named after him. So is Mort Bay and host of other suburbs. Mort was an Anglican. His eldest son married a Roman Catholic girl but Mort didn't want the house to end up in the Roman Catholic church so he left the house to the entire family. They didn't know what to do with it. At the time, the Anglican Archbishop was living somewhere quite inconvenient because it was far from the centre of town. The diocese bought the property off the Mort family for 7,000 pounds and it's been part of the diocese ever since (though various bits of it have been sold off to pay for its upkeep, given that it's got one of those annoying slate rooves and, of course, it's heritage listed).
After the tour, we sat in the sitting room chatting for ages. It was nice to just relax and spend time with college folk socially instead of always being worried about the next class or the next assignment or the next exam we have to prepare for.
I had a smooth run on the way home and didn't crash into anything.
Blinks:
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