Pleasures and Treasures of England : WOODSTOCK : A Town to Specialize In

Here’s my theory about American travelers who keep coming back to Great Britain: First time out, we start with a broad agenda, cramming Big Ben and Stonehenge and Hyde Park and Cambridge and Bath and the white cliffs of Dover into a single trip.

We come back with our heads as overstuffed as our suitcases, and resolved to specialize. On second visits we confine ourselves to, say, the West End of London, or garden cottages of the Cotswolds. Fine. But eventually we degenerate into deep specialization, and then downright obscurity. I know an Anglophile who arranged her most recent English itinerary around a visit to a rural town she’d never seen, just because its name appealed to her. Woon Gumpus Common. The English are not the only eccentrics on this planet.

I can claim no knowledge of Woon Gumpus Common, yet. But here I sit with another English stamp on my passport, and not a word to say about London. What I do have is a notebook full of scribblings about Woodstock.

Woodstock (Pop.: 3,500) is a well-aged peripheral blur just beyond the much-beaten path from London to Oxford. The town’s name is familiar, thanks to Sir Winston Churchill and his 18th-Century forebears, who with the Queen’s help built vast Blenheim Palace on the edge of town. But beyond the palace gates, Woodstock’s charm lies in its small scale. As Oxfordshire County Museum assistant Pat Crutch puts it, the town is “a very nice little place to look ‘round.”

Hop off the bus in front of the Marlborough Arms on Oxford Street, and the roadside scene resolves into half a dozen principal streets, the St. Mary Magdalene Church tower (which you can admire but can’t climb), a view of distant trees. A handful of small hotels, pubs and restaurants do business, an antique shop or two, a grocery and, as the English are inclined to say when they mean pharmacy, a chemist. Oxford is eight miles down the road to the southeast; 55 miles beyond in the same direction lies London. While the masses dash between them, Woodstock stands aside, offering all things small and specific.

Tea, to begin with. I arrived early on a June morning last year, several hours before check-in time at the Feathers Hotel, and so passed my first Woodstock hour over a warm cup at one of the Star Inn’s white patio tables on Market Street. For company, I had aged buildings, potted flowers and uncharacteristically clear skies. (April, the driest month of the year in England, nevertheless brings an average of 2.2 inches of rainfall; November brings 3.8 inches.)

While I sat sipping, a distinguished couple, gray and supercilious, slowly strolled past. Down the street, the Oxfordshire County Museum opened its doors. Up the street, Vanbrughs Coffee House (“Famous for cream teas with real West County Clotted Cream”) emitted happy morning scents.

Woodstock looks like an 18th-Century place, but civilization there dates back to at least the 10th Century AD, when royal parties were said to occasionally lodge in the area. By 1279, King Henry II was occasionally residing in a manor there and granting parcels nearby to his subjects. Glove-making emerged as a local specialty. Then in 1704, after the British defeated the French in a battle at Blenheim on the Danube, Queen Anne thanked ranking officer John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, by presenting him the royal manor at Woodstock. On the grounds rose Blenheim Palace, and around the grounds rose most of the Woodstock that travelers see today.

Many travelers use Woodstock as a base from which to strike at the nearby Cotswolds or Oxford, and one would have to be weary indeed to resist Oxford altogether. But Woodstock itself is worth some attention.

The town’s commercial center amounts to a triangle of streets named Oxford, Market and High. At the confluence of Market and High stand the Town Hall and the Post Office. The names on the storefronts alone may be enough to quicken some Anglophile heartbeats: K.G. Freeman & Son (“the butchers of quality”) at 10 High St., Bentlies of Woodstock (antiques) at 41 Oxford St., Thimbelina Children’s Finery at 17 Oxford St.

The glove trade, which peaked in the 18th and 19th centuries and included several large and small factories, has dwindled since World War II to a single company--Woodstock Leathercraft Ltd., a small concern about a block beyond the Oxford-Market-High triangle on Chaucers Lane.

I stayed three nights at Feathers Hotel at Market and Oxford streets--a well-appointed place with flower pots on its balconies, a highly regarded restaurant, 17 rooms and a reputation as one of the two most elegant and expensive hostelries in town. (The other high-end hotel is The Bear, just a block away on Park Street.) Each room at Feathers has its own toilet and shower--an improvement on many inns with floor plans dating to centuries past--and the double rooms I saw were spacious enough. But checking in as a lone traveler, I found I would be paying almost $150 nightly for a room that measured just 7 by 14 feet, perched on the third floor beneath a sloping ceiling, above a narrow staircase. Littleness is only endearing up to a point.

(I later spent a night at the King’s Arms across the street, a plain-fronted stone building with a green sign. Its nine rooms were more utilitarian than elegant, but service was top-notch and the bed and breakfast price was just under $90 nightly. Worth considering.)

Still, the Feathers has much to its credit. On my first morning there, after a hearty fruit-and-toast breakfast (included in the room tariff) in the dining room, I borrowed a bicycle (also included) and pedaled around town while the 9 a.m. bells sounded in the tower of St. Mary Magdalene Church.

In the churchyard, old stone moldered, ivy advanced and lichen creeped. Inside the stone walls, parishioners’ cushions lay arranged in the church pews, six to every row, hand-knitted designs ranging from traditional (Albrecht Durer’s Renaissance image of praying hands) to contemporary (an Amnesty International logo).

At Bowley House, an old stone residential structure that once housed a police station, a tidy group of empty bottles sat by the door, awaiting collection by the milkman.

At the end of Park Street, the big things began. There stands a triumphal arch, and a guard. You pay him your admission fee, adjust upward your sense of scale, and step onto the 2,100 acres that make up the Blenheim Palace grounds.

A green hillside, often occupied by grazing sheep and cows, slopes downward in the foreground. An artificial lake stretches into the distance, populated by ducks and the odd rental rowboat. An immense stone bridge--insisted upon by architect John Vanbrugh 288 years ago, despite the opposition of Sarah, the first Duchess of Marl borough, and eminent architect Christopher Wren--bisects the water. And from the green hillock to the left rises the palace itself.

Sir Winston Churchill once wrote that architect Vanbrugh and landscape architect Capability Brown “have succeeded at Blenheim in setting an Italian palace in an English park without apparent incongruity.” Of course, having been born in one of that Italian palace’s rooms, the former prime minister may not qualify as an entirely objective critic.

Churchill was born there on Nov. 30, 1874, proposed marriage there in 1908, and was buried in a neighboring churchyard in 1965. Churchill never carried the title of Duke of Marlborough, but among those in the Royal Family tree, his fame is unsurpassed. At various displays in the halls of Blenheim, visitors see the brass bed where his birth took place, hear a recording of him exhorting England’s American allies in World War II to “give us the tools and we will finish the job,” and sense his flair for drama in a letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper after the death of Charles, the ninth Duke of Marlborough, in 1954:

“I thought I might write a few lines about my oldest and dearest friend,” Churchill begins, “before he is carried to the tomb.”

From Blenheim, it’s a long walk or a short ride to Churchill’s final resting place at St. Martin’s Church. After the lavishness of Blenheim Palace, the churchyard is a quiet, modest place--if your timing is right.

Arriving on a Saturday morning, I found a simple stone marker with flowers. The church was empty and a lone gardener worked in the yard.

Then a bus roared up and 50 tourists beat a path to Churchill’s marker, ducked into the church, then marched off to the bus again, bound for Stratford-on-Avon.

“There’s been four coaches here this morning,” said Lawrence Hunt, a 75-year-old pensioner who was planting potatoes in the garden allotment across the street. “Morning is the busiest time. We get eight coaches a day, even in winter. Mostly Americans.”

But linger with thoughts of multiple tour buses and the point of Woodstock is lost. Instead, take an early walk around town, something like the last one I took.

At 33 Oxford St., the proprietor of Pitts Woodstock grocery chalked the specials on a board and leaned it against his storefront. Tuna steaks, red mullet, crabs, lobster , sea trout .

Around the corner at 5 Market Place, a shopkeeper stood in the doorway of D.J. Noonan, gentleman’s hairdresser, facing a crisis with profound Britishness.

“There seems to be a bit of a flood going on out back,” said the shopkeeper to an arriving workman. “I just wonder if something might be done?”

The crisis was resolved, and the occasion made a prize specimen for my Anglo-vignette collection. Who knows? Next time I’m in Woodstock, I may narrow my focus a bit more. When you’re there, look for the lazy fellow staking out 5 Market Place, waiting for English things to happen.

GUIDEBOOK

Gathering at Woodstock

Getting there: United, American, Delta, British Air, Virgin Atlantic, Continental, Northwest, TWA and USAir offer nonstop or direct flights from LAX to London. On Tuesday, cost of cheapest restricted fares rises from $638 to $789.

The most sensible way to Woodstock from London is via Oxford. Regular train and bus service leads from London-area airports to Oxford. One-way bus fare for adults: about $11 from Heathrow, about $21 from Gatwick. Round-trip train fares from Paddington Station in London run $42 for adults. More train information is available from BritRail at (800) 677-8585.

Where to stay: By the tourism office’s count, the town includes half a dozen hotels and eight to 10 bed and breakfast operations. I sampled three:

The Feathers Hotel (Market Street; from U.S. phones 011-44-993-812-291); 17 rooms, a popular restaurant, a patio bar; double rooms about $160-$225, tax and continental breakfast included.

Wheeler’s The Kings Arms (Market Street; tel. 800-225-5843 or 011-44-993-811-412); hotel and restaurant with eight rooms, run by the massive Trusthouse Forte chain; double rooms $73, tax and continental breakfast included.

Where to eat: Brotherton’s Wine Bar and Brasserie (1 High St.; phone locally 811-114); main dishes about $9-$15. Vanbrughs Patisserie and Coffeehouse (16 Oxford St.; tel. 811-253); informal, convenient to the Oxford bus stop; lunch about $7.

The big attraction: Blenheim Palace (tel. 811-325), birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill and a remarkable combination of architecture and landscaping, opens at 10:30 a.m. (last admission at 4:45 p.m.) March 15-Oct. 31. An all-inclusive ticket to the palace, park and gardens costs about $9 for adults, $5 for children ages 5-15, under 5 free.

For more information: Contact the British Tourist Authority (350 S. Figueroa St., Suite 450, Los Angeles 90071, (213) 628-3525. Also, the Woodstock Tourist Information Center (Hensington Road; tel. 011-44-993-811-038).