Packwood House and Baddesley Clinton are impressive houses in Warwickshire, a few miles east of Junction 16 on the M40 motorway (map) near the village of Lapworth. The former started life as a Tudor farmhouse in the 1550s, whereas Baddesley Clinton is a moated manor house dating from the 13th century. They are just 2½ miles apart. Both are owned and managed by the National Trust.
The entrance to Packwood House.
Baddesley Clinton from the north.
We consider them among our ‘local’ properties, being only 17 miles away (and usually just over 20 minutes) from Bromsgrove down the M42 and M40 motorways. We have visited both several times over the years since we joined the National Trust.
There are interesting walks around both. I don’t have photos of the three mile Packwood walk (map), but I have written about a delightful walk we made at Baddesley Clinton in mid-October 2018.
Let’s first turn to Packwood House.
It’s not what it seems. I’ve even seen it described as a pastiche. There’s no doubt that the house does date from the sixteenth century, originally built for William Featherston. It remained in the Featherston family for generations. There are few original features in the house, but the garden is a reflection of former generations. The Yew Garden in particular, which is reputed to have been planted in the 1670s by John Featherston, grandson of William.
Graham Baron Ash
But the house we see today, and its interiors, are the creation of Graham Baron Ash (Baron being his second name, not a title), who inherited Packwood House on the death of his Birmingham industrialist father, Alfred James Ash, in 1925.
This article, on the Landed Families of Britain and Ireland website (published in December 2015), not only describes the genealogy of the Ash family, but also details how Baron Ash set about restoring Packwood House, installing new features like the staircase, and building a link (The Long Gallery) between the house and a converted barn. He then set about acquiring architectural salvage from houses that were being demolished (detailed in the web article I referred to above). Unless you were aware of this story before visiting Packwood House, you’d probably have no idea that the interiors were a ‘fantasy’. But an elegant fantasy.
To one side of the house is a sunken garden, and beyond that the Yew Garden.
This link will take you to an album with all the photos taken during our various visits to Packwood House.
Satisfied with his creation, Baron Ash donated Packwood House, its contents, and gardens to the National Trust in 1941, although he continued to live there until 1947 when he moved to Wingfield Castle in Suffolk.
Baddesley Clinton retains much of its medieval ancestry. Entrance to the house is across the moat that surrounds the house.
The estate was acquired by John Brome in 1438, and passed to his son Nicholas, who built the nearby Church of St Michael. On Nicholas’s death in 1517, Baddesley Clinton passed to his daughter Constance who had married Sir Edward Ferrers, Sheriff of Warwickshire. It was Edward Ferrers who reconstructed the house much as we see today. He is buried in the church, as is Nicholas and many generations of the family. The Ferrers were a recusant Catholic family, and there is a priest hole in the gate tower.
The house remained in the Ferrers family for five centuries until 1940, when it was sold to a distant cousin who changed his name to Ferrers. The National Trust acquired the estate from his son in 1980.
I have included many photos of the interior of the house in this album.
The gardens are not extensive, but the National Trust gardeners keep the borders looking spick and span. At the time of our 2018 visit, there were dahlias of all colors in bloom. On the side of one building a glorious wisteria blooms in the early summer.
Even though Packwood House and Baddesley Clinton are such a short distance apart, there is too much to see if you would try to include both in a single visit. About four years ago, a new shop and restaurant were constructed at Packwood House serving great meals. Baddesley Clinton has a sheltered courtyard next to converted outbuildings (not inside the moat) where one can enjoy an excellent cup of coffee and a National Trust flapjack sitting in the sun, weather (and Steph) permitting.
A balanced diet . . . 