Choir Trip 2024: Fishbourne Roman Palace, Arundel Castle, Bognor Regis

No singing today! When the choir has the day off, another choir comes in and handles Evensong - I believe our subs today were from Virginia!

We started off at Fishbourne Roman Palace, an archaeological site about an hour from Salisbury. It was discovered in 1805 when a new home was being built on the site. The extent of the ruins wasn't understood until 1960 when the water company began digging and found a much larger structure - the largest (known) Roman residence north of the Alps, it's also one of the oldest, dating back to 75 AD. Our guide told us that while it might seem odd for Romans to move from the far nicer climate of Italy to cold, rainy England, they discovered that wheat, an extremely valuable and important crop, grew much better here. As in Bath, we got the full description of how ancient Romans cleaned themselves - it involves a lot of sweating and olive oil.
They've found quite a few artifacts - including some dug up by neighboring children planting a garden, jewelry, coins, pottery - all on display in the museum.
From there we headed to Arundel Castle, home of the Duke of Norfolk, Edward Fitzalan-Howard, who was in charge of planning Queen Elizabeth's state funeral as well as King Charles' coronation. There was a fascinating display of thank you notes and plans for both ceremonies. The Fitzalan family is one of the few aristocratic families that has been able to remain Romany Catholic, and to emphasize this, there were many pictures of the Duke with the Pope. The two castles we've visited have had modern photographs of the families that live there scattered throughout the rooms - a reminder that we are touring someone's actual house -we agreed we could do just fine living in Arundel Castle.
The castle was built beginning in 1067, but was badly damaged in the first British Civil War in 1643. They've worked through the centuries to restore it, and there were parts that seemed modern an livable. We got to see both parts, but NOT the bedrooms because our tickets didn't allow that.  The medieval part of the castle had lots of narrow spiral staircases, all of which we climbed to get to the close to see the view.
The more modern part had a huge library we were all extremely envious of - we learned that they use it in the winter when the castle is closed to the public. That's where all the Queen Elizabeth Funeral and King Charles coronation papers were on display.
The choristers have developed an interest in antiquing, so we visited quite a few shops and had lunch in the village, then headed to Bognor Regis, a seaside resort with a beach that is all pebbles. The choristers collected rocks, looked for sea glass and went wading in the water, then headed to town for dinner.
After some ice cream, we climbed onto the bus and headed back to Salisbury - everyone is super excited to go to Stonehenge tomorrow - it truly is the best Henge!