Views for needy eyes

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National Trust, Stourhead

Having used my car just for trips for Click and Collect and other essential shopping since the beginning of January, I decided yesterday to extend my definition of ‘local’ yesterday, my eyes so in need of some beautiful stimulation. And there is little more formally beautiful than the gardens of Stourhead, run by the National Trust.

I met a friend in the car park to hand over some knitting I had done for her, and we just marvelled at what we were seeing on the strictly socially distanced one-way walk round the grounds. From the, apparently newly presented, message from the Trust’s founder at the beginning, to the coffee in the Spread Eagle courtyard near the end of the walk, (where it felt really weird once more see people, just relaxing and enjoying themselves) I offer only photos and no further commentary.

Montacute

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Cluniac Abbey, Ham stone, hamstone, Holm Oak, Lockdown, Mons Acutus, Montacute, Montacute House, National Trust, Phelips, South Lodge Montacute, sweet chestnut, Wolf Hall

Time for another visit to a National Trust place. When I booked, for last Wednesday, 10th November, the forecast was for a 14% chance of rain. By the time the day came it was more like 50%. But we were lucky. Driving though showers to get there, I feared another rain-sodden visit, as to Park Cottage, but not a drop of rain fell during our wanderings, (unlike the journey home).

Montacute House is the most splendid of houses to visit in the area, (pace Barrington Court, which runs it a close second, and whose gardens I also visited recently) much used as a filming location, including for the recent television version of Wolf Hall. While the house was not open to the public, under current lockdown regulations, the gardens were, and we had them almost to ourselves.

As you drive there, you have a tantalising glimpse from the road of the long drive and the house at the end, but cannot stop. Here it is from the other direction.

I had forgotten to pick up my camera as I left home, but am quite pleased with the service my phone gave me, and by the time Daphne and I met up at this point, I had already taken photos of the displayed map,

of the amazing house front,

and of the crest emblazoned thereon.

We ambled round the gardens together, looking inwards and outwards.

The back of the house is even more impressive than the front.

A gate entices you into the formal, walled garden,

of which I select just one photo.

We were soon on the other side of the wall once more.

One person’s gazebo is another’s whole house.

We didn’t explore the parkland.

One of several holm oaks

Sweet chestnut

Kitchen garden

Daphne could not stay much longer, with a delivery to receive at home, but found time to have a takeaway coffee bought from the café (I had to improvise a mask, my nearest being in the car). We sat on a bench, which was just long enough to enable us to be socially distanced, with the view at the top of this post ahead of us.

I was not in a hurry, and had never walked round the village before. The car park was not closing for another 30 minutes, so I took the opportunity to rectify that lack.

The lodge to the house

For further exploration some time.

Sir Edward Phelips built Montacute House in the late 16th century, and the Phelips family held it until 1929. Bankrupted by a 19th century gambling Phelips, they first let, then in 1929 relinquished the house entirely, and it passed two years later to the National Trust.

Almost the entire village is built in the beautiful Ham stone (or hamstone).

If the house at the far end of this row looks a little wonky, that’s because

… it is.

I’ve not been able to identify the origins of this, now a private house.

All that remains of a former Cluniac Abbey, now also a private house

One of several B and Bs in the village

I had just taken this picture when a family of four came out of one of the doors. I couldn’t help but cry out from over the road, “You are so lucky living here, it’s beautiful!”. They heartily agreed and the children told me they were going off to the park to play football. (I suppose I was breaking lockdown regulations by speaking with more than one person.)

The explanation for the name, courtesy of Wikipedia (village link above): The name Montacute is thought by some to derive from the Latin “Mons Acutus”, referring to the conically acute St Michael’s Hill dominating the village to the west. An alternative view is that it is named after Drogo de Montagu, whose family originated from Montaigu-les-Bois, in the arrondissement of Coutances. Mortain held Montacute after 1066, Drogo was a close associate.

I’ve turned back to meet the car park’s closing time.

I couldn’t believe how colourful this garden was in mid-November!

Back at the lodge – which is a National Trust holiday let.

I felt so good after that visit, and all evening. With all the electronic means of communication and entertainment that I have at my disposal, I had not felt at all lonely during this or the previous lockdown, but I had not realised how much good some real face to face conversation with a friend – enhanced by a beautiful setting both during and after – would do me. That was great!

Fyne Court

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Andrew Crosse, Fyne Court, Magnum, Meadow brown, National Trust, Social distancing

Having finished my lunch on the stile at Hawkridge Reservoir, I made my way south for some ten minutes to a National Trust property in Somerset that I had not previously visited, Fyne Court. I was planning just to explore the grounds of the 65-acre estate, as I knew that the house had long ago – 1894 in fact – burned down. For generations, the property had belonged to the Crosse family, including one Andrew Crosse, who had been one of the key people to experiment with electricity early in the 19th century. The property was left to the National Trust in 1967.

Once away from the remaining outbuildings, I chose the longest – 40-minutes – of the three short waymarked walks. Pond-dipping was available on one of the other two,

as was what I imagined had been the old kitchen garden.

Two-metre social distancing indicators!

I seem several times recently to have been inside a wood looking out on a field.

Meadow brown

I always like a nice valley.

I was given permission to to take the photo of these two, and to include it in a blog post, even when I said the caption was likely to be ‘Big kids enjoying a tree’.

It was for me to enjoy the next tree, just 50 metres on. The heavens opened when I was between the two, with more of the 3% chance of rain which had been forecast for the day.

I stayed perfectly dry and used the wait to study details.

The rain did not last long,

and when I emerged I found I was not far from my starting point, the outbuildings.

Having looked at the panels, of which this is one, about previous occupants of the property,

I improvised a face mask from an old shirt I had in my backpack (just in case I was cold – quite the opposite!) and went into the tea-room, which had just reopened that afternoon it seemed, and treated myself to a Magnum.

I didn’t fancy sitting around to eat it, but took it back to my car. Just as well – the heavens opened again just as I got there!

I was pleased to find that no roadworks held me up on my way home.

Great Chalfield Manor

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Great Chalfield Manor, National Trust, Wolf Hall

Having visited The Courts Garden in the morning, and as I was too cold to sit still for long outside, Daphne and I sat in our respective cars to eat our lunches in solitary splendour.

Quite a nice view.

Great Chalfield Manor is a 15th century house, much used in filming period drama, (including the BBC’s ‘Wolf Hall’) with an arts and crafts garden. At present, because of the virus, the house is not open, but the garden alone is worth the trip.

The National Trust had, as usual, done a very good job in setting out a one-way system, and we did our best to respect it. We took the long walk and added bits of the shorter one.

As soon as I turned the corner, I recalled my previous visit, which, my photographic records tell me, was almost exactly three years ago.

The ‘tents’ – here and elsewhere in the grounds – made by those four trees were characteristic.

The epitome of velvet?

How wonderful it would be to step out of your back door with your morning coffee, and sit on such a patio!

I loved the way the downpipe had been tailored to the arch over the door!

And looking up…

A backwards glance at the end of a day which had, while not becoming sunny, at least warmed up. And hey, it had been pouring with rain the day before. Pity those who had booked for then.

The Courts Garden

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Holt, National Trust, The Courts Garden

In the village of Holt, near Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, not to be confused with Court House, East Quantoxhead, Somerset, on the coast, visited recently. This was the first of two visits, with my friend Daphne, to National Trust properties (gardens only) on the same day recently.

The house, ‘an early Georgian gem’, which is never open for visitors, was built for one of the area’s prosperous cloth manufacturers. The garden was set out at the beginning of the twentieth century by then owner Sir George Hastings, and developed a few years later by subsequent owner, Lady Cecilie Goff. To quote my book on the gardens of the NT, ‘It is a compartmented garden, … each section has a formal structure. Generally it is a quirkier composition [than Hidcote, ‘England’s most influential twentieth century garden’] : Lady Cecilie loved springing surprises.’

A one-way system and social distancing were in place. It was, of course, grey and overcast, with rain threatening, and a bit of a breeze.

I’m not sure what this was about. A result of reduced gardening staff?

Far too chilly for self-respecting bees to be out and about

Juvenile robin

Deliberate, or the drifts of ages?

It was coming up to lunchtime, and we had picnics with us. But I had been over-optimistic with (insufficient) clothing to sit in the breeze, so we moved on to the location of our second visit, and ate separately in our respective cars.

Barrington Court

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Barrington Court, Bustall, Gertrude Jekyll, Lockdown, Mark Rylance, National Trust, Strode House, Wolf Hall

I’m not complaining, but there is just one problem in having to book a time in advance to visit a National Trust garden (because of totally reasonable social distancing precautions). It is that you can’t decide to go spontaneously, depending on the weather. But I was lucky last Friday. I had not been able to get a ticket for Barrington Court in the morning, when I had originally wanted to go, and the only spot available was mid-afternoon.

In the event it poured with rain in the morning, was dry, if pretty overcast, in the afternoon, and started raining as I drove home. As I say I was very lucky. Moreover, as a member of the National Trust, I would not have suffered if I had decided not to go, as my visit was free of charge. I wonder if they refund paying non-members who on the day choose not to go because of really bad weather?

There are two main buildings at Barrington Court, a sixteenth-century house, built to a characteristic Elizabethan E-plan, and, immediately beside it, a seventeenth-century former stable and coach block, in red brick, now Strode House, which normally includes, among other things, the restaurant. The gardens still show much of the influence of Gertrude Jekyll, in Arts and Crafts style. There are in addition various 1920s outbuildings.

From the car park. Reception is closed, but two ladies check your ticket, explain that there is a one-way system, and remove the barrier.

On the way to the kitchen garden

Moreover, with no restaurant functioning at present, there is no outlet for the crops.

There is no explanation of who this is, nor of the owner of the head he has (presumably) just removed.

Hopefully the restaurant will be open again, and able to use these pears before long.

These buildings in normal times are used by craftsmen and women to display and sell their wares, and to run workshops.

Two-way system along this avenue. The house lies outside the plan of the visitable part of the estate.

Swinging right, to go over the moat, and approach the back of the magnificent Tudor house.

Strode House to the right

This is just the ‘dreary’ back of the house.

Before going round to the front, I am tempted by this gateway to go into some parkland.

This gateway leads me back into the formal area of lawn in front of the houses.

I dutifully follow the mapped one-way system, and walk round the lawn before approaching first…

… Strode House,

then the west wing,

and then the (south) front door, through which one would normally be able to pass. But never mind the 500-year-old house. The thought that the fabulous Mark Rylance was passing through this door just a little more than five years ago (for the filming of Wolf Hall) was enough to give me the shivers.

Gables, finials, twisted chimneys and mullioned windows.

After this I had to retrace my steps along the broad avenue. At this point I had an unfortunate encounter with a silly woman and her jumping up dog. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you, he’s very friendly.’ Never mind that he was indeed jumping up at me, obliging her to come close to me, that she still didn’t manage to control him and the only way he would remove himself (his name was Watson) from me was to point hard at his owner, who had by now withdrawn herself from my immediate space when I protested, and shout ‘GO AWAY!’ What is it about such owners who think it’s OK for their dogs to jump up, that you shouldn’t mind having your clothes mauled, and that you should love the antics of their dogs as much as they do?

I was quite discombobulated by all this and had to take myself in hand as I made my way to the formal gardens.

Until 1920 this area was a cow yard, and these were calf sheds, aka (I have learned today) bustalls.

On my way back to the car park, one of several lions guarding the outbuildings.

As a coda, I just have to share my huge pleasure at having been able recently to get together twice, with different sets of friends to make music, live. Not over Zoom, not joining in someone else’s recording, but actual live music-making as it used to happen BC. Well, not quite exactly as it used to happen, because this was al fresco. On Sunday we were five, that is two singers and three viol players. On Monday we were four singers, this time gathered in my garden,

and I have a brief video record of it here.

Lytes Cary Manor

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Lytes Cary, National Trust

In England, many National Trust properties – gardens only – are now open to the public once more. You have to book, they only allow a few people in at a time, two-metre social distancing, the current regulation for the whole of the UK, is insisted upon, and one-way systems are superbly organised. Booking is opened on Fridays for the following week, and to book for Lytes Cary Manor I logged on at 9.00 on the very first day that booking was open. I was held in the ‘virtual waiting room’ for 80 minutes. But I got the two tickets I wanted for the day and time I wanted.

Lytes Cary is only a few miles away from me, and is my nearest NT property. The house is consists of two parts. The older part, mainly Elizabethan plus a 14th century chapel, is open for visitors (normally, that is). It is a only small, but delightful. The larger part, now mainly in Arts and Crafts style, was added in the eighteenth century onwards, and is available for lettings. Indeed, in both 2013 and 2014 I hired it in early spring for four-day music-making house parties. One evening in 2013, Geoff (2nd left) took this photo of us all at dinner.

Back to the present. Thursday was overcast, but the 30% chance of rain worked out according to the odds. That my bridge partner, Daphne, and I had brollies with us must have done the trick. There were very few people in the grounds – the National Trust is being very cautious! They made it impossible not to follow their one-way system. Almost without comment, here are the pictures I took.

Much of this is the holiday let.

The general public do not normally have access to his part of the garden as it belongs to the let.

But they do to this.

Identification of this in comments would be appreciated. Even Daphne, a very keen gardener, did not know.

The drawing room

The visited part of the property.

Looking back at the younger part

The two parts of the house are clearly identified here. The very oldest part, the chapel, is the part jutting out towards the left-hand side

My next NT visit will be to Barrington Court, on Friday next. Logging on at 9.40 this morning (Friday), I didn’t have to wait, but all the slots bar one had gone, so it will be an afternoon visit for me. Daphne and her husband are planning to go there the following day. They managed not to have to wait – by logging on at 6.00 this morning!

A Mump and a Murmuration

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Avalon Marshes, Barrow Mump, Burrowbridge, Ham Wall, King Alfred Inn, murmuration, National Trust, RSPB, Somerset, Somerset Levels, starling

I’ve tried to find a female equivalent of ‘avuncular’, but, although there are suggestions on line, there is no such word authenticated by common, or even rare, usage. Anyway, I had an auntly visit for the two nights either side of Christmas Day, and we fully exploited the lovely day that was to be outdoors.

A short, sunny, very local morning walk, with Glastonbury Tor to our left (on the outward leg) went unrecorded as far as images are concerned, but it made a good start to the day. After a light lunch, conscious that daylight would not last long, we drove across the moors (formerly known as the Somerset Levels, now renamed the Avalon Marshes) to Burrowbridge, where the King Alfred Inn was the headquarters of the unofficial relief operations during the terrible flooding in 2014. We parked at the National Trust car park, and I offered young-in-heart B. the chance to climb up Barrow Mump, a sort of mini Glastonbury Tor.

She was game. (She always is.) I really should have thought ahead and suggested she put on trousers.

We took a gently spiral route, and looked back from time to time at flooded fields, a normal phenomenon at this time of year. Somerset is thought to mean ‘Land of the Summer People’, from the time before the Levels were drained, and people lived on the ‘islands’ in the winter, grazing their cattle on the flat lands in the summer only.

Some people think that this sort of selfie is just not on (private joke).

It was VERY muddy and even more slippery.

Two-thirds of the way up

We made it just a little further

Coming down

Looking back, we saw that some people made it to the top.

It was not for lack of energy that we decided to abandon our target, but because it just became so difficult and dangerous underfoot. We thought that discretion was the better part of valour. Indeed, we were pretty pleased with our achievement.

A backward look at the ruined church from the car park.

The low sun was getting lower , and I was very aware that these were ideal conditions to see the starlings coming in to roost, since it is only in clear skies that they do their amazing murmurations, their swirling and whirling to avoid attacks by birds of prey. (I presume the latter do not hunt in cloudy conditions.) Otherwise they just arrive where they have decided to settle for the night and go straight down to bed.

I had rung the starling hotline, which tells you where our local starlings have settled the previous night. (They come in numbers to feed in my garden during the day!) It is not guaranteed, but likely that they will choose the same place, out of three possibilities, the following night. By a series of questions during the ten-minute drive to what I made a mystery destination, B. managed to work out where, or at any rate why, we were going. We found many people already gathered at RSPB Ham Wall. Ten minutes later the starlings started to arrive. And to murmurate, possibly the best I have ever seen there.

Those were all taken towards the north-east. The rest are to the south-east.

We stayed for about half an hour, and could have stayed for the same time again to see all the stragglers in. The light was going fast and the birds were still streaming in as we left.

I was, as they say, right chuffed, that nature had laid on this spectacle. B. had not visited Somerset for eight years, so this was real treat for both of us.

Killerton

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Acland, Broadclyst, Ellen Terry, Exeter, Henry Singleton, House of Commons, Killerton, M, National Portrait Gallery, National Trust, New Zealand, Octavia Hill, Saudi Arabia, Suffragettes, Suffragists, Women's Marseillaise

Killerton, Broadclyst, Devon.   With nothing in my diary for the day, and having noted long ago that I wanted to catch an exhibition there before it closed, I took myself on Friday to this National Trust property a few miles north-east of Exeter.  It is one of the county’s largest estates.  The house was originally intended to be temporary, but the grandiose mansion planned was never built. The late 1780s Georgian property was extended twice, early in the nineteenth century and again a hundred years or so later.  I came across this description of the estate at one point.

It was donated to the National Trust in 1944.  After the obligatory coffee on arrival, I left the elegant Georgian stable block, which now houses café, shop and plant sales, and took a backward glance at it.

At the end of the drive lay the house itself, presently housing three exhibitions relating to the long campaigns for votes for women. A stark reminder of how the campaign could divide members of the same family, aunt and niece in this case, each living on the estate, greeted visitors. The first exhibition was a collaboration between the NT and the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Octavia Hill.  Octavia Hill! Against! Social reformer! She who had so much to do with the founding of the National Trust!

Ellen Terry – pro women’s suffrage

I had not previously realised just how strongly some women felt that they should not get the vote, and I felt uneasy all the time I was in this small exhibition, very conscious how another political debate today, on which I feel so strongly, is dividing households and friends. (My cats are totally apathetic on the matter, so my household is tranquil.)

The other two exhibitions, fashion related to the suffragette/suffragist movement, and more about the two Acland women, left me less emotionally troubled. I could not have been a suffragette, but am equally sure that I would have been out there marching with the non-violent suffragist movement.

The music room

I was very tempted to sing this out loud, but I didn’t quite dare.  I’m pretty sure though that onlookers and volunteers would have been delighted!

A set of playing cards laid out on the console table, with pro and anti themes

A House of Commons with not a woman in sight …

The drawing room

The Pastor’s Fireside, by Henry Singleton, the 19th Baronet Acland reading to his family

The library, somewhat spoiled in my view by all the panels of quotations

The dining room

The movement had a long history

None looked like achieving anything, until the World War I when women proved their worth in ‘men’s’ jobs. I actually got a little angry inside as I looked at the changing pictures , some of which are in the slideshow below, showing just what work they had done.

 

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Why did they have to do ‘men’s’ jobs to prove they were sufficiently responsible to vote?

This map showed that New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote (1893), and Saudi Arabia (2015) has been the latest

A delightful respite in one of the bedrooms from all that politics

On emerging from the house, I went looking for a snack in the Dairy Café. But it was closed, so I went back to the entrance café, not wishing to take a meal in the main restaurant in the house. After having my soup, I went off in search of the old 1950s Post Office, but reading the notice saved me the tramp over there, though the path looked enticing.

I’m glad the fence was strong!

This was Friday

So I went back to the house and started exploring the gardens, which, as this slideshow proves, still had plenty of colour, this early October day.

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From there I went further into the grounds.  I came across a granite cross, which I have since learned was erected in 1873 in memory of the 10th Baronet who did so much to develop the estate, by 40 of his friends. But for me the main interest was that it was swarming with harlequin (i.e.  non-native) ladybirds, scurrying about, never still and occasionally flying off and returning. 

Harlequins come in many colours

Were they enjoying the warmth that the granite had absorbed during the morning?  Were they preparing to swarm together to find a place to hibernate?  My researches have not got me very far… But some of them came far with me.  It was a good fifteen minutes and several hundred metres away before the last one emerged from my hair.

I was keen to leave Killerton in time to avoid Friday evening traffic, but still had time for a gentle stroll in a small part of the parkland, where I met scarcely a soul. 

A glimpse of the Victorian chapel

Lovely spot for a romantic picnic

Autumn rolls on

This post has been very long, but here is a slideshow for any reader with stamina for 12 more pictures with details.

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Buckinghamshire 3

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iron lung, Lord Nuffield, Morris Motors, National Trust, Nuffield Foundation, Nuffield Place, Oxford colleges, Wolseley

The final National Trust property we visited was Nuffield Place, the surprisingly modest – in the circumstances – house built by William Morris, founder of Morris Motors in Oxford, later to become Lord Nuffield.  Unsurprisingly, we saw a few cars.

Lady Nuffield’s Wolseley

We wandered in the gardens.We saw a small shed containing this iron lung. Lord Nuffield gave 5000 of them, made at his factory in Cowley, to hospitals throughout the British Empire.  £12,000,000 was an awful lot of money in the 1930s.

 

We went into the house. 

The robes worn by Lord and Lady Nuffield at the 1937 Coronation

In Lady Nuffield’s bedroom

In Lord Nuffield’s bedroom. Really.

Personally I found the order of this more appealing.

Opinions between us differed as to whether we liked this bathroom.

The double spare bedroom

 

‘The horn of Plenty’.  Oxford colleges benefit from Lord Nuffield’s wealth.  The Nuffield Foundation continues to ‘improve social well-being through education, research, and innovation’ 

A trip to the woods was the treat on the last day of my visit.