That’s a quotation from a poem by Poet Laureate John Dryden, and distant cousin to the family whose home we visited last week. Summer had arrived, and – having prepared a picnic – we headed 50 miles southeast to  Canons Ashby in Northamptonshire.

Canons Ashby House and estate was acquired by the National Trust only about 30 years ago. It had been offered to the Trust several decades earlier, but the Dryden family (which continues to have connections with Canons Ashby) was unable to provide the financial support needed to enable the Trust to take on the necessary long-term commitment. That changed around 1980 when the National Trust was able to secure public funds to acquire and restore the house that had already declined into a near terminal state of disrepair.

Three decades on and you wouldn’t believe what a transformation has taken place, and Canons Ashby is indeed one of the nicer National Trust properties that we have visited since becoming members at the beginning of 2011.

The 2500 acre estate and house was inherited by Sir Henry Dryden in 1837 (the 8th generation of his family to live at Canons Ashby), when he was just 19. Leaving his studies at Cambridge, he set about rescuing the house from more than 100 years of neglect, and made some extensive alterations to the rooms inside.

But the origins of the estate go much further back. An Augustinian priory was founded there in the 13th century, and the Priory Church of St Mary is all that remains today of a much larger settlement. And from Tudor times, and after the Dissolution of the monasteries, stones from the priory were used in the construction of the original parts of the house. The Priory Church is one of just a handful of privately-owned churches in England. The site of a medieval village lies to the north side of the house (11 on the site plan). Apparently, the Black Death badly affected Canons Ashby in the mid-14th century and more than half of the village died.

The house itself is surrounded by a small formal garden leading southwards towards the Lion Gate through what is now a vegetable garden. Beautifully manicured lawns and flower beds grace the south side of the house, but to the west is a walled garden, the Green Court, planted with yews, which provided the family some degree of privacy from outsiders and servants alike.

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An archway (in part of the original Tudor building) leads into the Pebbled Court, and steps leading into the Great Hall. On the ground floor there are several rooms open to visitors: the hall itself, with an impressive display of swords and muskets on the walls and over the fireplace; the paneled dining rooms (with some impressive portraits including Sir John Dryden who erected paneling in many of the rooms in the 18th century); the book room/study, and a small room that was a museum developed by Sir Henry. Above the fireplace in the dining room is a mirror, slightly tilted forwards to enable anyone with their back to the window (but facing the fireplace) to see the garden (Green Court) outside.

 

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On the first floor, two rooms in particular are impressive: the Drawing Room with its fireplace and domed, plastered ceiling; and the Tapestry Room, a bedroom with beautiful tapestries hanging on the walls. In another bedroom, Spensers Room, some of the oak paneling has been removed to reveal the remains of some fine Tudor wall paintings.

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Off a long gallery on the north side of the building there is a nursery, and the bedroom of Alice, Sir Henry’s only daughter – who became a well-known photographer who established a dark room in the cellars. Descending gingerly through low-framed doors and winding stairs in the oldest part of the house, there is the Servants’ Hall (once thought to be the original family dining room) and the kitchen (with its incredibly high, vaulted ceiling). The Servants’ Hall is rather intriguing, for a couple of reasons at least. The walls are covered in paneling, brilliantly decorated with coats of arms and escutcheons, some of which seem to indicate a link with Freemasonry (even though the Freemasons as such were not founded for a couple of centuries later). At least one window was bricked up – which previously had a view over the Green Court – so that servants could not watch the family at play.

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From Tudor times onwards, the Dryden family were harshly Puritan, and supported Parliament during the Civil Wars of the 1640s. In the Green Court there is a statue of a shepherd boy reputed to have warned the Parliament troops stationed at Canons Ashby about the approach of Royalist forces. It is rather curious, therefore, that a portrait of King Charles I is displayed rather prominently in the dining room.

Canons Ashby is a delightful National Trust property. It feels like a family home, but the centuries of its history just ooze from the woodwork.

The same family – more or less. Dudmaston Hall has come down to the present residents (I don’t think ‘owners’ is the right term as the National Trust is involved in looking after property) through various familial inheritance twists and turns, not by direct ancestry. Landed gentry but not aristocrats.

Lying in the Severn Valley, a few miles south of Bridgnorth in Shropshire (but close to Worcestershire and Staffordshire county boundaries), Dudmaston Hall (well, the present building at least) dates from the late 17th century.

In many ways the house itself is quite modest. The ground floor entrance hall, library and oak study are open to the public. Access to the first floor is up a beautiful cantilevered staircase. Several bedrooms can be viewed – some of them still used as guest bedrooms! As the house is still lived in, photography is not permitted inside the house.

From 1966 until their deaths in the late 1990s, Dudmaston Hall was home to Sir George and Lady  Rachel Labouchere (she had inherited the hall from her uncle Capt. Geoffrey Wolchyre-Whitmore, the family that had lived at Dudmaston for several generations). Sir George served in the diplomatic service during and after the Second World War, and was HM Ambassador in Spain from 1960-1966. He was also an avid collector of modern art (including many by Spanish artists), assembling – it’s reported – one the most important private collections in the country. Many of the best pieces are still displayed at Dudmaston today. I’m afraid I’m not really enthusiastic about modern art, but there was one bronze sculpture that really did take my fancy. Out of my budget range, though.

Lady Rachel was a collector of botanical paintings, and many of those she collected are also on display, and of particular interest to Steph and me because of our botany backgrounds.

The gardens at Dudmaston are nothing to write home about, but the estate and park are extensive with opportunities for long walks – which we took full advantage of. Starting from the car park we headed towards the Big Pool that you can see on the map below (click on it for a larger image), over the Rustic Bridge, round the Dingle, across the dam, and following the path to the River Severn. Coming out of the woods on to a west-facing slope above the river, we could see the track of the Severn Valley Railway (a heritage line) on the other side. It would have been a great spot to watch the steam trains. But none came by, but once we’d headed back along the lake, we did hear a couple of locomotives whistling in the distance.

The lake has a high dam at the southern end, and is a haven for a large flock of Canada and greylag geese, that were swimming about in ‘family’ groups and happily honking to each other.

While not the seat of a distinguished aristocratic family, Dudmaston Hall does have some important links with Britain’s industrial heritage. Lady Rachel was descended from the Darby family of Coalbrookdale (said to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, less than 15 miles north of Dudmaston), where Abraham Darby developed iron smelting in the first decade of the 18th century and where, at Ironbridge, the world’s first bridge constructed from iron was built across the River Severn in 1779 (by Darby’s grandson, Abraham Darby III), using the same design principles as if it had been made from wood.

Charles Babbage, father of the computer who designed a mechanical Difference Machine in the early 19th century, was the brother-in-law of the Wolchyre-Whitmore owner of Dudmaston at that time. Babbage spent considerable periods at the hall. He also invented and installed the hall’s central heating system, and several of the metal vents are on display. 

So while the visit to Dudmaston was, in some respects, a little disappointing, it was nice to get out and about, and enjoy a late summer day in the fresh air. Fortunately the journey to Dudmaston took little more than 30 minutes, being only 18 miles or so to the northwest of Bromsgrove.

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On 24 June 2020, we made a farewell visit to Dudmaston. As more National Trust properties begin to open, we are taking the opportunity to grab tickets as and when we can. Last week we had a lovely walk around the park at Hanbury Hall.

It was the hottest day of the year to date yesterday, but that didn’t deter us from heading to Dudmaston, and attempting a walk around the pool. In fact, when we arrived there, right on time at 13:30, we discovered that the NT had implemented a one-way system around the park, so once we’d started there was no turning back. We followed the route (shown by a red dotted line on the map below) through The Dingle, across the dam, and round the Big Pool back to the garden in front of the house.

Here is a link to a photo album of yesterday’s visit.

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During our trip to the northeast a couple of weeks ago, we visited three National Trust properties over three days. They all had one feature in common: until quite recently they were still occupied by their owners.

In Northumberland, the two houses were: Seaton Delaval Hall, just north of Whitley Bay, about a mile inland from the North Sea Coast (map); and Wallington House and Gardens (map), home to generations of the Blackett and Trevelyan families for generations, about 25 miles northwest of Newcastle. In North Yorkshire, just south of Helmsley in the North York Moors lies Nunnington Hall (map), which we visited on the journey home.

Seaton Delaval Hall
This impressive property was designed in 1718 by Sir John Vanbrugh (who also designed Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard) for the Delaval family who had occupied estates in the area since the time of the Norman Conquest in the 11th century. It comprises a Central Hall and West and East Wings (which houses the large stables). The Central Hall was destroyed in a fire in 1822, although a number of features did survive. The West Wing (and the extensive cellars) originally housed the servants, but in the 20th century became the residence of the owner. Some restoration has taken place, and the Parterre Garden was designed in the 1950s. Although Seaton Delaval will never again reach its former glory, its outward appearance speaks volumes for what it must have been like.

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Wallington House and Gardens
The hall dates from the 17th century, but had extensive modifications in the Palladian style in the 18th. Two aspects particularly impressed me: it definitely had the feel of a family home; and the walled garden, about 15 minutes walk away from the house, in among the woods, is perhaps one of the nicest gardens I have visited. The entrance hall has bright murals showing many different aspects of the history of Northumbria, and the house is full of beautiful treasures. Wallington is definitely worth a visit for so many reasons.

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Nunnington Hall
Alongside the River Rye, parts of the house date from the Tudor period, but over the centuries it was remodeled. There are signs of its occupation by Parliamentary forces during the English Civil Wars of the 1640s. The gardens are not extensive, but quite attractive.

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Kedleston Hall. An impressive Palladian mansion in the Derbyshire countryside, just a few miles to the west of Derby city centre. Kedleston has been the seat of the Curzon family for generations, almost 1,000 years! The Curzons accompanied William the Conqueror on his 1066 jaunt to England, and stayed on, accruing vast estates in the process. What’s interesting from a personal point of view is that my grandmother’s family (BULL) come from the village of Hollington (and neighbouring villages) only a few miles further west from Kedleston. I guess over the centuries their lives must have been influenced, one way or the other, by the Curzons.

The present builing was designed by Robert Adam, relatively unknown at the time he received the commission from Sir Nathaniel Curzon. Kedleston Hall remains one of the best examples of Adams’ designs still standing.

Standing in about 800 acres of parkland, Kedleston is approached along a winding road, that crosses a bridge over a weir in the man-made lake.

It was never intended, apparently as a family home, but as a venue for Lord Curzon to show off all his accumulated art.

The east wing (on the left in the photo above) did house the family quarters, while the servants lived and worked in the west wing. The Grand Salon in the central structure was meant for entertaining and displaying the works of art. The entrance today is through the ground floor on the north, and entering the main hall on the first floor the size and height of the entrance hall are very impressive with marble columns either side. There are rooms leading off on both sides, and it’s possible to make a circular tour of the rooms, passing through a music room, a sitting room, a library, the dining room, and a state bedroom, among others.

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Alongside the hall is the small All Saints Church, no longer used for worship, but the mortal remains of many of the Curzon family are buried there. Under floor near the main altar are two figures of the Fifth Lord Curzon of Kedleston and his wife, dated 1275.

While this house does not have impressive gardens through which to wander, the large parkland does offer the visitor an ample opportunity for some pleasant exercise in the Derbyshire countryside.

And on the ground floor is an interesting museum of Indian artifacts – weapons, jewellery, ornaments, silverware, and costumes – from the time of George Nathaniel Curzon who was Viceroy of India from 1899-1905.

It seems that Chastleton House – a Jacobean mansion built between 1607 and 1612 in north Oxfordshire in the heart of the Cotswolds near Moreton-in-Marsh – was destined for decline. The same Jones family lived at Chastleton House for almost the entire period, until it was sold and became a National Trust property in the early 1990s.

Although the house itself has a rather grand façade, it has rather modest grounds, and is located in the centre of Chastleton village. The journey from Bromsgrove took us south around the historic town of Evesham, and a steep climb up the Cotswold escarpment near Broadway. On a glorious day like yesterday the views of the Cotswold landscapes were wonderful.

What makes this National Trust property different from most others is that there has been essentially no attempt to restore the house to its former glory (as with Calke Abbey in Derbyshire). Instead the Trust has made essential repairs to prevent further deterioration of the property’s fabric, but what’s on show is what was there when the house was vacated. And quite a number of rooms, such as the Great Chamber, with its magnificent plastered ceiling and fireplace, appear today much like they did several centuries ago.

And because the Trust is preserving not restoring, many more rooms are open to the public, who can access the house on timed visits. This means that the number of visitors in the house at any one time is limited which enhances the visitor experience.

Over four floors from the magnificent entrance hall, the dining room (with a fine display of Staffordshire salt ware from the 17th century), up the East Stairs to the Great Chamber, a library, and some of the bedrooms, and finally to the top floor to the Long Gallery that stretches the entire width of the house, and faces east. Apparently the family used the Long Gallery for exercise on days when it was impossible to go outside.

The gardens are not large, and must have been much finer in the past. The topiary bushes deteriorated many decades ago when it was no longer possible to maintain them. The village of Chastleton lies just beyond the garden walls, and the lack of several ‘expected’ facilities in the house (such as a laundry) is apparently down to these having been provided by villagers living close-by.

There were fewer visitors to Chastleton House yesterday than I expected, and it was lovely to experience the tranquility of its surroundings. Definitely well worth a visit, and one of the Trust properties that I have enjoyed most.

Coughton Court. An elegant Tudor house in the Warwickshire countryside near Alcester (and only 12 miles from home).

A National Trust property since 1946, it’s been owned by or lived in by the same Throckmorton family for six centuries.

The family has been involved in some of the major events of English history – as a major Catholic family during the Reformation under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth I. They were dragged into the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, even if only tangentially.

One wing of the house is still occupied by the family under the terms of a very long lease with the National Trust. The house contains some wonderful treasures, and the extensive gardens and bluebell wood are worth the walk.

We enjoy our National Trust visits, but the weather over the past months has really prevented us from getting out and about. Just over a month ago it really did look as though Spring had arrived and we visited Charlecote Park. But that was just one day, and we even had more snow and bitterly cold winds from the Arctic since then.

But over the weekend, the ‘blocking high’ did move away allowing Atlantic weather to encroach and bring in milder air from the south. And when that happens you have to grab every opportunity of enjoying the glorious outdoors. Well, the weather wasn’t too brilliant – at least it wasn’t so cold nor wet to prevent our second visit yesterday to Hanbury Hall, an elegant William and Mary mansion just over six miles from where we live in the rolling north Worcestershire countryside. After we joined the National Trust in 2011, Hanbury Hall was the first property we visited simply because it was right on our doorstep, so-to-speak.

Hanbury Hall was the family home of Thomas Vernon, and may have been built on the site of an earlier residence. Above the main door is the date 1701, but other – and better evidence – suggests that the hall was not completed until 1706. The date above the door may have been added during Victorian times.

Among the glories of Hanbury are its extensive parkland – occupied by many ewes and their lambs during our walk yesterday, and its gardens, in particular the parterre on the southwest of the main building. There are extensive outhouses – a stable-yard, a dairy (in the process of renovation) a walled garden, an orangery, and an ice house.

As you might expect, the Hall’s interior is sumptuously decorated, and the main staircase is a magnificent feature with paintings on the ceiling blending into those on the walls.

The Hall was occupied until 1940 when the last Baron Vernon, in very poor health at the time, took his own life, and the baronetcy became extinct.

Hanbury Hall is easy to find in the Worcestershire countryside, has plenty of parking, and is certainly worth a few hours of anyone’s time.

Today, the weather couldn’t be more different than yesterday when, with a clear blue sky and not a cloud, we headed out on our first National Trust visit of 2013. We’d just been waiting for the weather to improve.  And yesterday, Spring had truly sprung. Out of the wind it was really warm; it actually reached 13.1°C at Wellesbourne (one of the warmest places in the West Midlands yesterday), just a mile down the road from Charlecote Park, a Tudor mansion built beside the River Avon in Warwickshire, about half way between Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick.

Since we joined the National Trust a couple of years ago, we visited nearly all the ‘low-hanging fruit’ – the properties reasonably close to our home. Hopefully as the weather improves over the coming months we’ll find it easier to travel further afield. Charlecote Park lies at the heart of a rather small estate, only about 75 ha, alongside the River Avon, and is the home (since the mid 13th century) of the Lucy family and descendants. The current house was built by Sir Thomas Lucy in the mid-16th century, but has been extensively modified in the intervening centuries, most significantly during Victorian times. The direct Lucy line died out in the mid-19th century, and Charlecote Park was inherited by the family that still lives in one of the wings, the Fairfax-Lucy’s. The tomb of Sir Thomas Lucy survives in the adjacent church, St Leonard’s, which was founded in Norman times but the building today is mainly Victorian. It has some beautiful stained glass windows, and the sculpted marble or alabaster tombs of Sir Thomas and others taken from the old church.

In the house there is access to the Great Hall inside the main entrance, the billiards and drawing rooms downstairs, and several bedrooms upstairs, as well as the main staircase. In the grounds are outbuildings housing a collection of Victorian carriages, and the laundry and brewery. In one wing is an immense Victorian kitchen.

The formal grounds are quite limited – mainly a parterre beside the River Avon, from which there are views across the meadows to the village of Hampton Lucy (about 1 mile away) and what looks like its magnificent parish church of St Peter ad Vincula which, surprisingly, I’ve discovered was built in 1822 and added to 30 years later. In the park there are flocks of rare breed Jacob sheep and fallow deer, the later introduced in Tudor times in the 16th century.

Legend has it that the young William Shakespeare was caught poaching rabbits in the grounds of Charlecote Park in about 1583 (there’s a second edition folio of Shakespeare’s complete works on display in the Great Hall). The playwright had his ‘revenge’, it is said, on Sir Thomas Lucy by lampooning him as Justice Shallow in two of his plays: Henry IV (Part II) and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

In some ways, this visit to Charlecote Park was a disappointment, despite the beautiful weather. The formal gardens were small – I had expected something more extensive. And access to parts of the house was rather limited, partly due to the fact that some sections of the house were being rewired. Nevertheless there were some beautiful objects on display. There was a large nursery selling plants for the garden – hellebores seemed to be the specialty.

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Snowshill. A small Gloucestershire village, nestling under the lip of the Cotswolds north-facing escarpment, with stunning views from Broadway Tower (close by) over the Vale of Evesham immediately to the north, the Malvern Hills to the west, the hills of South Wales to the southwest, and on a clear day (like when we visited just a couple of days ago) for more than 50 miles northwest to the hills of Shropshire, due north to Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, and the skyline of Birmingham creeping over the distant horizon beyond Warwickshire to the northeast. What a glorious part of this green and pleasant land we call England.

The village is home to Snowshill Manor and Garden, gifted to the National Trust in 1951 by its rather eccentric owner, painter-craftsman, and poet, Charles Paget Wade (1883-1956).

An architect by training, and having wealth derived from the family’s sugar plantations in the Caribbean island of St Kitts, Wade purchased Snowshill Manor in 1919 and used it to house his growing – and exceedingly eclectic – collections of craft work, furniture, paintings, and almost anything he considered beautiful.

There has been a manor house at Snowshill for centuries, but the oldest parts of the manor today date from the early years of the 16th century. In the 1920s he began to lay out the gardens in the Arts and Crafts Style, and today these are a delight of understatement: walled ‘rooms’ in the soft Cotswold limestone, broad sloping banks, intimate spaces.

Wade himself lived in a small house in the garden known as the Priest’s House – a rather rudimentary accommodation that he redesigned, installed ‘modern’ plumbing, and filled the house with even more collectibles.

The manor was turned over to his ever-increasing collection that he had begun to assemble as a small boy. His collection is full of extraordinary beautiful objects: oriental furniture, as well as English pieces; suits of armor from the English medieval period, the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, and Japanese samurai armor; many paintings and religious artifacts; bicycles; spinning wheels; and models and toys, among many other things.

Our visit to Snowshill Manor was a slight disappointment – I had expected rather more extensive gardens to wander through. Nevertheless, just seeing what Wade had accumulated through a lifetime of collecting was truly amazing. The collections at Calke Abbey that we saw recently are the efforts of one family. The Snowshill Manor collection of more than 20,000 items is the passion of just one man – Charles Paget Wade.

Just click on the photos below to open web albums.

Amid the hills and steep valleys of northeast Herefordshire lies the Brockhampton Estate, comprising some 1700 acres of farmland (with Hereford cattle and Ryeland sheep), woodland, and orchards (especially damsons – Prunus domestica) just a couple of miles east of the small town of Bromyard, and about 11 miles almost due west of Worcester.

The estate was gifted to the National Trust in 1946, and there are now miles of woodland and park trails to wander and stunning views over the Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire countryside.

The weather was glorious yesterday, so we took the opportunity of getting to know the Brockhampton Estate (only about 30 miles from where we live), and view the magnificent 14th century moated manor house at Lower Brockhampton.

Approaching the manor house there is an imposing Gatehouse that was restored in recent years. In fact the house has gone through several phases of remodelling and refurbishment throughout its history.

And although the family moved out of the house towards the end of the 18th century (and built an imposing house overlooking the estate – the 100 year lease is apparently up for sale at £3 million!), the manor became a farm and has been lived in ever since. In fact one of the National Trust staff occupies the rear part of the manor.

There are also the ruins of a Norman chapel just to the side of the manor house.

The main features of the manor are the impressive beamed hall, the minstrel gallery, bedroom and study. Downstairs there is a parlor. These are the parts of the house open to the public.

The garden was filled with color, particularly dahlias – not exactly a ‘medieval’ blossom, since these were introduced into England (from their native Mexico via Spain, apparently) at the end of the 18th century or early 19th (I’ve seen 1803 or 1804 as specific dates cited).

Behind the house and across the moat is a large damson orchard. Because of the season this year, the damson harvest is running late, and the amount of fruit we observed on the trees did not seem abundant – probably due to poor pollination earlier in the year. It’s apparently been a very poor year for apples, pears, and plums among other fruit because of the very wet weather we have experienced. This part of the UK (in Herefordshire and Worcestershire) is famous for its apples and pears and other soft fruit.

As the autumn draws in, the swallows and house martins were beginning to gather and feed up their growing fledglings. I haven’t seen so many congregating in one spot for a long time.

In the woodland there are six estate walks ranging from 1 mile to over 3.5 miles. Given the recent wet weather it was very boggy underfoot in some parts on the 3.5 mile Oak Walk that we took (the longest), but on a warm sunny day like yesterday it was a delight to walk through the trees and experience the cool breeze of an ancient English woodland – full of enormous oak and beech tress, some pines, and a few ash.

What a magnificent sight. And just occasionally, as the woodland canopy opened up, views over the countryside to the hills beyond. All in all, Brockhampton Estate was a most enjoyable visit, and certainly one worth returning to at another season.

Click here for more photos.

A few days ago, with a fair to promising weather forecast (it actually turned out much brighter and warmer than expected) we made another of our National Trust visits – this time to Calke Abbey, near the village of Ticknall which lies just to the southeast of Derby (of Rolls Royce aeroengines fame), in the English Midlands.

Calke Abbey (incidentally there was never an abbey there, although there had been an Augustinian priory in the vicinity from the 13th century) is a country house, rebuilt between 1701 and 1704 – amid several hundred acres of farm and park land (including a deer park) – by Sir John Harpur, the 4th baronet. His impressive memorial was built in St Giles Church on the Calke Abbey estate.

The original estate was purchased by the 1st baronet in 1622, and remained in the Harpur family until 1985. Sir John Harpur married a daughter of Lord Crewe, and at some date thereafter the family name was changed to Crewe, and then Harpur Crewe. The last baronet died in the early 20s, and the estate passed to a grandson, Charles Jenney – who changed his name to Harpur Crewe. When he died in 1981, the estate was faced with crippling death duties, and like so many ‘stately homes’ it began to deteriorate because the family could no longer afford its upkeep. In 1985 ownership passed to the National Trust. And what a treasure trove the Trust encountered!

It seems the Harpur Crewes were mildly eccentric, didn’t have electricity installed in the house until 1962, and almost never threw anything away – they were great hoarders. So when the National Trust came to inventory the house and its contents, they found a property that consisted entirely of its original contents. Whole rooms, such as the dining room, were furnished just as they had been originally completed in the 18th century.

Normally the National Trust acquires various items and displays them in its different properties according to the period or aspect they want to emphasise. But not so with Calke Abbey – nothing has been brought in. Although extensive roof repairs had to be carried out, there has been remarkably little water damage in the house. Even when the house was occupied, different wings were abandoned after the Second World War, and essentially left to their own devices and deteriorate (these had the feel perhaps of Miss Havisham’s house in Great Expectations by Victorian author and one of the world’s greatest novelists, Charles Dickens).

In the case of Calke Abbey, the National Trust took the decision to repair the fabric of the building (to reduce further deterioration) but not to renovate. So it’s quite fascinating to move through the house and see those parts which continued to be occupied, and those which had been shut up for decades.

In the entrance hall and lobby there is a number of stuffed heads of longhorn cattle that were once farmed on the estate. In fact, the house is full of stuffed heads of deer – they are everywhere – and throughout the house there are dozens of glass cases of stuffed birds, mainly of British origin, but also fine examples from around the world. It’s a taxidermist’s paradise.

In the caricature room the walls are covered with 18th century cartoons relating to politics and society at that time.

The main staircase is very impressive, and is made from oak and yew.

But it’s in the dining room, the breakfast room, and the saloon that the glory of Calke Abbey comes to the fore. The original plasterwork is still intact and speaks volumes for the quality of the craftsmanship of the 18th century.

The bedroom of Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe remains apparently much as it was when he abandoned it for another when he was married in 1876.

On the National Trust website, it’s possible to take a virtual tour of Calke Abbey, which certainly gives you a feel for the house and its contents. I have also posted a web album where you can see many more photos from inside the house and the park and gardens.

A short distance from the house stands St Giles Church, and there is a beautiful stained glass window above the altar that was installed by Sir George Crewe who died in 1844.

There is a formal garden, and a walled kitchen garden (that was formally much larger) in addition to the farm and parkland. And two very interesting features are the tunnels that connect the gardens with the house, and one from the wine cellars in the house to the brew house, alongside the stable yard. This tunnel weaves for about 100 m, and allowed domestic staff to pass from the house to the brew house without being seen!

Calke Abbey was certainly more than I had expected, and is a fascinating insight to 18th and 19th century living.

Powis Castle. A jewel among the rolling hills of mid-Wales just south of Welshpool, on the border with the English county of Shropshire, some 80 miles by road from my home in Bromsgrove.

The original fortress was built around 1200, but over several hundred years it was extensively rebuilt and remodelled, reaching its zenith in the late 17th century under the Stuarts and into the 18th century. While many castles in Wales were built by the Normans post conquest to keep the Welsh under control, Powis Castle was built and retained by a local family, the Herberts, who accumulated power and were given titles under various monarchs, especially the Stuart monarchs Charles II and James II.

The Herberts fought on the Royalist side in the English Civil War, and the castle was eventually occupied by Cromwell’s Parliamentary forces. The Herberts were Catholic, and the then Lord Powis went into exile with James II in 1689, although his lands and estate were returned in about 1725.

Built on a craggy rock, the castle and gardens owe much to 17th century investment, with formal gardens laid out on a series of very steep terraces cascading down from the house to a large lawn and formal garden that was once a vegetable and fruit garden.

All around are quite large, sculptured yew trees that were planted in the 1680s. Originally they were allowed to grow ‘naturally’ but in the 19th century the change in horticultural taste was for a more formal look.

The terraces are full of colour, and the garden staff have taken great care to label many of the plants.

In the 18th century, one of the Herbert daughters married the son of Clive of India, and the castle houses a large collection of Clive memorabilia. While the National Trust owns and manages the buildings and gardens, it does not own many of the furnishings. As a consequence photography is not permitted inside the castle, so the only photos I have to show are external views of the castle and round the gardens.

The weather was fantastic, and we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Powis.