In a gust of tradition worthy of Gormenghast, every year St John’s College Cambridge sends original poetry in Latin and Greek written by a scholar of the college to Burghley (pron BUR-lee) House, ancestral home of the Cecil (pron See-SELL) family.

It’s not clear what the Cecils do with the poetry, but judging from the chimneys, they have a lot of fireplaces.

The first Lord Burghley (the gh is silent as in Conghway), William Cecil, was a minister of Elizabeth I.

You’ll notice he spelt his name Burleigh, with the silent gh in a completely different place. Since it’s silent you could probably spell it Ghburlee or Burghleigh or even Bghurghleaghghgh if you wanted to.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Elizabeth I.

Though they have an “Elizabeth I room” there, she never stayed at the house, and it wasn’t even a room at the time, it was part of a long gallery. William Cecil built the house, and his descendants have been messing it about and filling it with glop for five hundred years. Unfortunately, the best paintings were sold off in the 20th century to pay death duties, so there is not much in the way of old masters. However, there are still some fine and weird paintings in the collection.

This one shows the importance of geometrical instruments in three way sex.

Then there’s the guy with the pet unicorn.

One of my favorites was the blindfolded naked woman being dragged across the ceiling by the her hair which was held by a cherub riding a battle swan.

I never get invited to parties like that any more.

Many of the rooms had amazing frescos painted on the walls and ceilings, sometimes blurring the difference between the two. For instance, here’s a horse jumping off the ceiling onto a wall.

No, the pillars aren’t real.

Here’s a naked woman being dragged off the ceiling by Tarzan and his pet apes.

Here we see some classical gods attempting to climb out of the wall.

I think they are aiming for the giant silver wine cooler.

Here’s a few of the other rooms.

You should have the idea by now. But wait. It gets better.

Are you ready for the grounds? They have a white hart.

OK, it’s probably a white doe, but let’s call it a white hart so it can get a job posing for pub signs.

There are two specialty gardens, a garden of surprises and a sculpture garden. Look, if you’re going to have a garden of surprises, don’t put signs on all of they saying what they are. Let it be a frigging surprise, OK?

Here are some pictures with the signs carefully cropped.

Many of the surprises consisted of interesting ways to get wet, and there were a number of screeching kids who were taking full advantage of this. But at least none of them were washing their pram wheels.

On to the sculpture garden, where they have a full size TIE fighter. Paula attempted to lift it using The Force.

The have armored battle swans in the lake. The world just got a lot more dangerous.

Here’s some more sculpture – we have a good Internet connection tonight so you get lots of pictures.

I must admit I was a bit worried by the teddy bear giving the nazi salute. There’s something very sinister about teddy bears at the best of times, so finding one in a woodland dell planning a fascist uprising is disconcerting.

On the way to the bus station this morning, a MAGPAS air ambulance landed next to us.

I had a great story about MAGPAS but it is not longer funny as the central character was posthumously revealed as a pedophile sexual predator. That’s even worse than fascist teddy bears.