The Romans arrived at Bath in AD43, calling it Sulis Minerva – a combination of the goddess Minerva with the local deity of Sulis.  They loved the hot springs, practically the only ones in the country, which gush from the ground at 40 degrees C.  Their bathing complex came to include a huge, vaulted structure, which collapsed at some point after the legions left Britannia.   It became so derelict that the source of the spring was lost and only discovered again in the 1870s.

These days, privacy is high on the agenda.  There are huge concerns over data, images, digital identity and personal space, all of which should be kept private.  But how was this possible in previous ages when almost all of life took place in the presence of other people.  This was as much the case for the social elite as it was for ordinary families.  As court records of divorce cases in the 18th century reveal, very little happened that was not known to servants.  Privacy, as we understand it today, would have been a rare luxury at almost any period before the Second World War.   

Everyone has heard about the Great Fire of London – but what about the Great Fire of Northampton…or Marlborough…or Blandford Forum?  Fire has frequently wrought destruction on towns, cities and country houses, and this was particularly the case in the 17th century.  Clive and John discuss why this should have been—what caused the fires, what the consequences were for the places concerned and how they were rebuilt.

The then Prince of Wales first came to Transylvania in the late 1990s on an official visit.  It’s the only time he’s come on business.  He fell so much under the spell of the place that he bought a house here, in one of the wooden villages, settled, many centuries ago, by Saxons from Germany. 

For the first time in the history of this podcast, Your Places or Mine has gone on location. John and Clive have been invited to The Ned’s Club, the amazing complex of hospitality venues, including restaurants, hotel and private members’ club, which occupies the former head office of the Midland Bank in the City of London.

Windsor Castle has been imbued with symbolism since William the Conqueror founded it after the invasion of 1066. He took the name of Windsor from an existing Anglo-Saxon palace which stood on a different spot.

This week YPOMPOD is joined by Alice Loxton — History Alice to her many followers — to discuss the extraordinary series of crosses that King Edward I built in memory of his queen, Eleanor of Castile in the 1290s. Eleanor died in Lincolnshire. Her body was then carried back to London for burial, and at every place that the cortège stopped a beautiful cross was erected. 

The American girl was a phenomenon, charming, sporty, better educated than her European counterpart. talk on a wide range of subjects.  Around sixty American girls became peeresses at the turn of the 20th century.  ‘We are the dollar princesses,’ ran a popular song.

In this summer episode of ypompod, we got to the seaside – to Ramsgate, beloved of Queen Victoria and now home to the biggest Wetherspoon’s (in an elegant neo-Greek building called the Royal Pavilion of 1913) on the face of the planet.  

Where is Ewelme Palace?  It was one of the most splendid houses in the country when it was built in the 15th century but nothing of it now remains.  There are, however, some of the ancillary buildings and monuments that went with a great medieval estate.  Its chatelaine Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, is remembered by one of the most beautiful tombs in the country.

The National Gallery, now 200 years old, occupies one of the most famous buildings in London, on the north side of Trafalgar Square.  This Greek Revival masterpiece by William Wilkins was designed to take account of the view of St Martin in the Fields from Pall Mall—so unusually it was conceived as having been seen from the side.  Clive and John discuss both Wilkins’s design and the Sainsbury Wing, added by Venturi, Scott Brown in the 1980s.

In this episode, Clive and John discuss the holiday village of Portmeirion, an improbable, festive vision of the Mediterranean built on a wooded peninsula of Snowdonia, whose centenary falls this year.

Castle Howard in Yorkshire is one of a select group of country houses which must be seen as complete works of art.  Visitors to the great domed palace, set in the gentle landscape of the Howardian Hills north-east of York, may be bowled over by the panache of the architecture, or the beauty of the woods; by the dazzling quality of the pictures and furniture, or the charm of the porcelain. 

Picnic hampers, black tie, world-class opera — it’s the season for Glyndebourne, the festival that sired the happy, uniquely British phenomenon of country house opera. This week Clive and John discuss the house from which it all began (still central to the experience) as well as the headstrong, eccentric but visionary John Christie, founder of the festival in the 1930s.