Viceroy's Palace which quite unexpectedly and suddenly
appears as the viewer ascends a rather short, steep
hill between Baker's flanking Secretariat Buildings at
New Delhi. One wonders if Lutyens might have visited
Highclere, accompanied by Gertrude Jekyll.
Highclere is not so much a temple house of the Greek
persuasion, situated as it is atop a high hill surrounded by
still higher elevations, but rather a 19th century evocation
by architect Sir Charles Barry of what one might fancifully
imagine the mass of the central portion of the ancient
temple of Jerusalem to have been. There is something
Masonic about it. Indeed, Barry designed an ultimate
temple to democracy and much of the ideals of Western
legislative process in the Houses of the British Parliament.
Highclere is the capital to all that surrounds it, but mostly to
the history within it, as the current configuration enveloped
HYLAND
