Bushey

Suburbs can conceal real wonders as we have learned before on this blog.   Bushey was the home of an artists colony established by Hubert von Herkomer a member of the Royal Victorian Order who had a school in a house called Lululand. He also produced film and promoted motor racing so he seems like my kind of artist - not much of an ascetic. After he got tired of the school he sold it to another artist called Lucy Kemp Welch who sold it back to Herkomer after a while. Ms Kemp-Welch had a memorial gallery in the church hall but this was closed in the 1980s due to insurance problems. No matter: Herkomer's and Kemp Welch's pictures are now kept in Bushey Museum which is in the former town hall.

When I called in the museum there was an interesting exhibition that I called Sheldon Cooper's Fun With Flags. This was a display of flags put up by the inhabitant of one of the houses in Bushey to celebrate various national occasions. There were quite a lot of flags although the Swiss flag was not square as it should have been. There was local history too and a memorial to William Schwenk Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan. The best bit of the museum was undoubtedly the paintings. Lots of late nineteenth and early twentieth century paintings although there was one described as a town in East Anglia which I thought represented Uxbridge. The gardens of Lululaund have been converted into a beautiful rose garden although not so lovely in January.