Mixing Centuries

I went on an excursion today to Harewood House.
(In typical English fashion, the house is spelled 'hare' as in bunny,
but pronounced "HAAR" as in pirate. !)
The house is actually 18th century.
Lovely 18th century, too-- the rooms were all,
or nearly all,
decorated by Robert Adam.
I could have spent hours photographing the ceilings,
but interior photos were not allowed.
I wouldn't have minded this if the gift shop had actually sold
decent quality photos,
but they only had a couple of bad-quality post cards,
and none of the details I found so charming
(like pictures of the griffin plasterwork).
[I really dislike it when some lovely historically significant spot
won't let you take photos
AND
doesn't provide any resource for decent photos of their own.
I mean, I would gladly pay a reasonable sum
for nice pictures of this place-
preferably digital photos that could be used in class....]
Anyway.
After an hour house tour we got to go see the 'medieval' part of the complex
(after all, this was an excursion organized by medievalists.)
This consisted of archaeological trenches on the south lawn.
I am not an archaeologist and know very little about excavation
so it was actually rather interesting
to see the site and hear the explanations.
Mostly what they found were drains.
(Okay, not all drains.
But all the artefacts had been removed,
so drains was what we saw.)
I also enjoyed seeing the charming sheep herd
just below the house garden facade
(though the sheep had left lots of less than charming droppings all over the lawn...)