Kentwell Hall in Long Melford, Suffolk and Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk are both moated, Tudor manor houses. Both have belonged to prominent Catholic families; the Cloptons at Kentwell and the Bedingfields at Oxburgh. The Cloptons took on Kentwell in 1377 but ran out of heirs in the middle of 17th century; the Bedingfields have lived at…
Tag: National Trust
Constable Country
Dedham Vale is a landscape of English oaks, pollarded willows and water meadows around the meandering River Stour. The villages are small but with imposing churches built on the profits of the wool trade. It is the landscape of John Constable and so, for many, of lowland England. Constable painted many scenes around the Mill,…
Sissinghurst on St David’s Day
Having previously visited on a leap day, this is a visit four years and a day later under similarly blustery conditions with the clear light of early spring occasionally lighting up the deep red brick and fattening white magnolias. The place is unchanged. The white garden is green and the other gardens empty apart from…
Autumn inkblots
Like so many country estates, the large back garden at Sheffield Park is a display of the most fashionable trees and shrubs brought in by Georgian and Victorian plant collectors, especially from the remotest and most inaccessible temperate forests in the Far East and Far West; the seeds were as prized as moondust. Gingkoes sit…
Stourhead
The landscaped gardens at Stourhead are a sort of pastiche Greek paradise comprising of a dammed lake surrounded by an assortment of stone structures including temples, pantheon, Palladian bridge and, for good measure, a Gothic cottage. The homage is set within a narrow valley planted with tall, exotic trees. Above the valley, there is a…
Hatfield Forest’s fritillaries
The little, flint church at Bush End was built in the 1850s; a medieval pastiche that has aged well under magnificent trees full of noisy jackdaws. The church was constructed at the edge of the perfectly preserved Royal Hunting Forest established nearly a thousand years ago. Hatfield Forest is part ancient wood pasture and part…
Sissinghurst on Leap Day
The last day of February brings more squalls from the west with intervals of piercing blue sky and pristine spring sunshine. The castle garden is subdued with the plants starting to grow but needing a run of warmer, gentler days; white magnolias are bursting; the crocus, iris, squill and summer snowflake are out; and a…
Knole Park
The huge sweet chestnut, beech and oaks at Knole are turning to rich golds and reds. The sky this evening is clear and clean but the sun drops quickly; long shadows fall behind the avenues of great trees, pierced by blinding shafts of brilliant sunlight that fall on the dying bracken and grasses. The fallow…
The Dart Estuary
The Dart Estuary is a sinuous flooded valley, lined with ancient oak woodlands that run down to, and hang over, the water. The influence of the Atlantic creates a damp, dark understorey of holly, birch and butcher’s broom with a ground flora rich in ferns and mosses. Between Dartmouth and Totnes, there are a handful of villages…
Sissinghurst’s Rite of Spring
The gardeners continue to create colour wheel harmonies; bright and gaudy; cool and relaxed; the garden compartments have diverse compositions. The spring bulbs, like brass, shout the loudest with purple and red fanfares everywhere. More muted arrangements in spring greens and whites are often simpler tunes in minor keys. All the many troughs, large and small, have…
Ightham Mote
The rich afternoon light of autumn lifts the ancient, dark-tiled manor house out of the deep shade within the narrow, wooded valley. A dammed lake feeds a black mote around the richly patterned square of stone and half-timbered buildings within which is hidden a small, beautiful, cobbled quadrangle. On a dull dead winter’s day, the place is rheumy; dripping…
Cobham Wood and Darnley Mausoleum
October 9th A father and son are up in a walnut tree wobbling and stretching, chasing a rich harvest of green nuts. A little owl calls from a huge oak and two kestrels hang about. We walk up the track to the ancient woodland that is still not autumn gold but remains stubborn green and…