Saturday 26th October 2019 Return to Alumni Events
This was a very difficult trip as so many things did not work for us. Initially it was booked for the 30th May 2020 but the Covid lockdown caused a cancellation, so we rebooked for May 29th 2021, this too was cancelled because of a Covid lockdown. The final and successful rebooking was for October 2nd which was rather hurriedly arranged by the Henry Moore Foundation and us with some trepidation of another lockdown. However Hoglands, the family house of Henry Moore was closed and the tour of Hoglands was replaced by a tour of the grounds. They waived their normal payment of “one month in advance” and changed it to one week in advance so when we paid, we had 19 of 20 places booked. Then came the petrol station problems and many people cancelled chiefly because getting petrol was very difficult, so despite several places being taken up by reserves, we only had 13 on the day. The weather was the next difficulty as it sounded horrible with rain all day some of it heavy but on the day it was fairly light which was well controlled with umbrellas and water-proofs.
Welcome refreshment after the journey
We finally arrived at Perry Green to elevenses of coffee/tea and biscuits to recover from the journey and to prepare for our tour of the grounds for which we were divided into 2 groups with a very knowledgeable volunteer guide for each. This took an hour and we were certainly very much more knowledgeable after the tours and our thanks and admiration goes to them.
One of our two groups with their guide looking at the
Large Reclining Figure on it's artificial hill
Much of Henry Moore's work is spread over the 70 acre estate arranged by the sculptor. The pieces span much of his working life and vary from the fairly large to the huge, all placed where Henry Moore thought that the environment suited them including a
The grounds also contain The Sheep Field Barn gallery with sketches and small sculptures on display, the Bourne Macquette Studio where Henry Moore made lots of small figures to try out ideas, the Plastic Studio, a large metal frame covered in transparent plastic which could be enlarged or reduced to house the final plaster versions of sculptures, the Yellow Brick Studio which was used for several stages of small sculptures and an exhibition of his drawings, The Living Hand Exhibition which contains studies of the Nobel Prize winning Dorothy Hodgkin’s hands. There was also the “Aisled Barn” with huge tapestries which he designed but, on the day we visited, it was used for a wedding reception!
Many of us bought our lunches and eat at the cafe in between the glut of art and stayed almost until closing time. So finally the day became a day to treasure perhaps more so because of all the difficulties.
Sheep Piece
Pictures by Helen and Terry Moore (Click on the pictures for larger versions)