Glyndebourne Close is on Bemerton Heath, to the west of Salisbury.
I’m not entirely sure why it’s called Glyndebourne Close. It’s probably a reference to Glyndebourne in Sussex, the location of the annual opera festival, but I’ve not found any significant relationship between Glyndebourne and Salisbury[1]
‘Glyndebourne’ may have been chosen for the name because it symbolises wealth, or quality.
The meaning of ‘Glyndebourne’
The etymology of ‘Glyndebourne’ seems straightforward. The word has two elements.
‘Glynde‘ – Glynde seems to mean ‘fence’ or ‘enclosure’. It comes from the Old English word ‘glind. There is a village close to Glyndebourne which is just called ‘Glynde’ [2]
‘Bourne‘ – Bourne is probably the same word as in Salisbury’s River Bourne. It means river.
The Glyndebourne Festival
Glyndebourne House is near Lewes in East Sussex. It is believed to be about 600 years old[3]. Although it looks a pleasant enough manor house, it is world-famous for being the site of the Glyndebourne Opera Festival.
The Glyndebourne Festival was founded in 1934 by John Christie and his wife Audrey Mildmay. They had the will and, at least in the short term, the finances to make the festival ‘Not just the best we can do but the best that can be done anywhere[4]‘.
The artistic and musical direction was provided by two asylum seekers from Nazi Germany, Fritz Busch and Carl Ebert[5].
The Christies built a 300-seat theatre on their Glyndebourne estate. This was expanded over the years and today holds 1200[6].
The festival was originally heavily subsidized by Christie[7], but one of the last festivals before the war managed to break even.
After the war, the festival again made a loss, but funding came from the John Lewis Partnership and then from a textile manufacturer named Nicholas Sekers[8]
In 1954, a charitable trust called the Glyndebourne Festival Society was set up – this was the first charity for the performing arts[9].
Since that time the festival has become well established. Gus Christie, the grandson of the founder is Executive Director[10].
Footnotes
- I did discover that the three dining halls at Glyndebourne were (and perhaps are) called Over Wallop, Middle Wallop and Nether Wallop, after the villages between Salisbury and Andover. The link here is that the festival was founded by John and Audrey Christie. John Christie’s mother was Lady Rosamond Alicia Wallop, daughter of the fifth earl of Portsmouth. The Earls of Portsmouth still have the surname Wallop
I believe that the land at Bemerton Heath was owned by the Earl of Pembroke, so I don’t think there is any connection with the Wallop family. [↩]
- I found this on the University of Nottingham’s Key to English Place Names page. I haven’t worked out how to link directly to the entry for Glynde – so if you want to see the full entry, click on the link and then search for ‘Glynde’ [↩]
- Glyndebourne – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [↩]
- Early years | Glyndebourne [↩]
- Early years | Glyndebourne [↩]
- A brief history of Glyndebourne | Glyndebourne [↩]
- The Glyndebourne website says that he spent £100,000 on the festival [↩]
- Nigel Wykes, ‘Christie, John (1882–1962)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32407, accessed 28 May 201222 May 2012] [↩]
- Nigel Wykes, ‘Christie, John (1882–1962)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32407, accessed 28 May 201222 May 2012] [↩]
- New generations | Glyndebourne [↩]