The History Man visits Lyddington Bede House in Rutland

Click on the image above to go to a short BBC film about Lyddington Bede House in The Notswolds Rutland.

The Bede House was originally a palace of the Bishops of Lincoln, but after the dissolution of the monasteries it was converted into almshouses.

This is a chance for me to remind you about the BBC Rewind site, which stuffed with good things like this.

Did we want to defeat Brexit or just to feel superior?

This morning I tweeted a story from the Mail on Sunday:

When he returned home from the horrors of the First World War, a thankful Walter Brown planted an oak tree on the edge of his farm.

Standing tall more than a century later, it symbolises the longevity of his ancestors’ relationship with the land in Rutland.

The Brown family has tilled the soil in the Welland Valley for more than 300 years, but Walter’s grandson Andrew fears the new Agriculture Bill will mean he is the last.

Mr Brown, 56, says the Bill fails to protect the UK’s world-leading food and welfare standards.

And that could be the ‘final nail in the coffin’ for 40,000 family farms which would be replaced by massive US-style feedlots, where tens of thousands of cattle are crammed into pens with poor environmental standards.

Almost by return someone tweeted:

Having a low risk guess here that they're unshakeable Tory and, by definition and utterly predictable demonstration, hard Brexit supporters.

They were wrong on both counts.

Here is Andrew Brown commenting on the referendum result in 2016:

English farmer Andrew Brown says last week’s vote by the British people to leave the European Union (EU) will have long term negative implications not just for the nation’s agricultural sector, but for the country as a whole.

“Words fail me. This is an unmitigated disaster, not only for farming but for the whole country,” the farmer from Rutland in eastern England said.

Mr Brown had been an active campaigner for a ‘stay’ vote prior to the referendum, saying British farmers could not get a better trade deal with Europe than they had as members of the EU.

“People talk about unwinding regulation, but do you really think the EU nations are going to let trade partners have less compliance regulation than they do?” he asked.

“A vote to leave is like turkeys voting for Christmas.”

As to being a Conservative, Andrew Brown is an Independent member of Rutland County Council - the photo is of Lyddington, the largest village in his ward.

Around here it's not unknown for 'Independent' councillors to be members of the Conservative Party on the queit, but I have no reason to think that Andrew Brown is. His interest in conservation, for instance, is not typical of local Tories.

In fact, reading his biography I am struck by the thought that he sounds just the sort of person who should have featured prominently in the Remain campaign.

But even if Andrew Brown were a Tory and a new convert, we should still be welcoming him to our side of the debate. And I am pleased the Mail on Sunday is now campaigning in defence of our food standards.

Instead, most Remain activity on social media appears designed to make ourselves feel good and to ridicule our opponents.

But if we want to win in the end then we have to convert some of those opponents. And ridiculing people is about the last thing likely to do that.

I made much the same points back in March 2018, when I asked But could Remain win a second referendum?

I am now tempted to ask if we ever really wanted to defeat Brexit. Was it always more about feeling superior?

Welland Valley Beer Festival

I have spent the day enjoying the Welland Valley Beer Festival - nine pubs, stretching from Great Bowden on the edge of Market Harborough to Lyddington in Rutland, served by a relay of vintage buses. How can you not enjoy that? The buses also call at Market Harborough station, so it is easy to reach it from further afield.

I visited the Talbot Inn at Gretton, the Wheel & Compass at Weston by Welland and the Queen's Head at Sutton Bassett. In between I found some things to photograph and even had a walk between those last two villages, though that is the shortest between participating pubs apart from the two in Lyddington,which really would have been cheating.

As to the beer, I rather liked Biggus Dickus from Nobby's Brewery at Guilsborough - and not just for the name. And I enjoyed listening to The Others at the Queen's Head.

Lyddington Bede House, Rutland

Lyddington is a village stretched along a single road. Its buildings, which include two good pubs, are of an almost gaudy orange limestone. If it were in the Cotswolds it would be full of coaches. Because it is in Rutland I had it almost to myself yesterday.

I was there to look at Lyddington Bede House. I had visited the village before, and knew that it was a pleasingly ramshackle medieval building standing next to the church, but I still had no real idea of what a bede house is.

It turned out that it used to be the village almshouses. But before that it had been something far more remarkable.

For what is called the Bede House is the only surviving wing of the palace of the Bishops of Lincoln. This diocese once stretched from just outside London to the Humber, so Lyddington was somewhere near its centre and served as its administrative centre.

And it wasn't a bad life being Bishop of Lincoln: the diocese once maintained a large hunting park just outside the village.

The palace was seized by the crown at the dissolution of the monasteries and much was demolished. The bottom storey of the surviving wing was established as an almshouse in 1600, with accommodation for 12 poor men, two women and a warden.

The last residents appear to have left in 1930. The rooms were like cells, cold and damp even in yesterday's sunshine. One of the women's apartments (on the first floor) has been furnished as it would have been in the 19th century.

And upstairs you will find the bishop's chambers, which are in a remarkably good state of preservation, and you can climb another flight of stairs to the attics above.

In 1954 the Bede House passed into the care of the Ministry of Works. You can catch a glimpse of the years between these two dates in "Just Rutland" by J. & A.E. Stokes, which was published in 1953. The authors describe borrowing the keys from a house in the village.

You will find the tower below on the village street at the corner of the Bede House grounds. It was at first defensive and then ornamental. Today you can pass through an arch at its base on your way from the street to the church and Bede House.