Simon Bradshaw (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
major_clanger) wrote2014-04-13 09:22 am
major_clanger) wrote2014-04-13 09:22 am
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Packwood House
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attimes_bracing and I went to Packwood House yesterday, a National Trust property about five miles south-east of Solihull.
Packwood House is to some extent a reconstruction of a 16th-century house rather than a true preserved example of one, in that although the structure and grounds date from that time most of the fixtures and contents were added in the 1920s and 30s by the then-owner, Graham Baron Ash, who also extensively remodelled it; the impressive Great Hall, for instance, was until then an adjoining barn. Many of the rooms contain little notes with reminiscences about the house and its owner, who appears to have viewed the project as a full-scale toy house to show off, to the extent of being rather OCD about everything being in its place.
(One anecdote by a friend observed that if a book was taken out and read, Ash would return it to its rightful place within a minute of it being put down. And this source reports that he had the habit of adding a comma between his first and middle names, which perhaps speaks volumes about him. But he gave Packwood House to the NT, for which we can forgive him a lot in the way of snobbery and foibles.)
The house is impressive enough, but the gardens are amazing: yew trees planted in a mix of rows and scattered singletons, all topiarised into curving geometric shapes. The central avenue leads up to a small hillock featuring a spiral hedge that takes you up to a viewpoint where the house is framed in a narrow slot between two yews that are - to modern eyes - startlingly redolent of the Twin Towers.
Elsewhere there is a pretty lake, currently home to a small flock of Canada geese, with a couple of odd constructions beside it. One is a small cottage seemingly made of recycled doors, the other a giant-size four-poster bed. These are apparently Follies In Progress, and signs invite us to return later in the year to get the full benefit.
The final part of our visit was to the kitchen garden, which had apparently been neglected for decades but is now being replanted. (I wondered what the line of tiny shrubs was until I realised that it was a box hedge that had not yet grown into a hedge.) A sign noted the contribution of the resident cat to keeping pests at bay, but he was offsleeping on patrol so sadly we didn't see him. We did see a rather nice little sculpture of flowerpots and fir cones though.
It's one of those locations full of nice photo opportunities.
It also has, newly-built, a very nice café, where we had a quick snack before heading off.
More photos here.
Verdict: well worth a visit if you like (quasi) Elizabethan houses and formal gardens.
attimes_bracing and I went to Packwood House yesterday, a National Trust property about five miles south-east of Solihull. Packwood House is to some extent a reconstruction of a 16th-century house rather than a true preserved example of one, in that although the structure and grounds date from that time most of the fixtures and contents were added in the 1920s and 30s by the then-owner, Graham Baron Ash, who also extensively remodelled it; the impressive Great Hall, for instance, was until then an adjoining barn. Many of the rooms contain little notes with reminiscences about the house and its owner, who appears to have viewed the project as a full-scale toy house to show off, to the extent of being rather OCD about everything being in its place.
(One anecdote by a friend observed that if a book was taken out and read, Ash would return it to its rightful place within a minute of it being put down. And this source reports that he had the habit of adding a comma between his first and middle names, which perhaps speaks volumes about him. But he gave Packwood House to the NT, for which we can forgive him a lot in the way of snobbery and foibles.)
The house is impressive enough, but the gardens are amazing: yew trees planted in a mix of rows and scattered singletons, all topiarised into curving geometric shapes. The central avenue leads up to a small hillock featuring a spiral hedge that takes you up to a viewpoint where the house is framed in a narrow slot between two yews that are - to modern eyes - startlingly redolent of the Twin Towers.
Elsewhere there is a pretty lake, currently home to a small flock of Canada geese, with a couple of odd constructions beside it. One is a small cottage seemingly made of recycled doors, the other a giant-size four-poster bed. These are apparently Follies In Progress, and signs invite us to return later in the year to get the full benefit.
The final part of our visit was to the kitchen garden, which had apparently been neglected for decades but is now being replanted. (I wondered what the line of tiny shrubs was until I realised that it was a box hedge that had not yet grown into a hedge.) A sign noted the contribution of the resident cat to keeping pests at bay, but he was off
It's one of those locations full of nice photo opportunities.
It also has, newly-built, a very nice café, where we had a quick snack before heading off.
More photos here.
Verdict: well worth a visit if you like (quasi) Elizabethan houses and formal gardens.
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Mind you, quite a few other National Trust places seem to have been owned by obsessive collectors. Snowshill Manor is full of an eclectic collection of stuff assembled by its owner, who ultimately moved out into an adjacent converted barn because the house was too full to live in by that point. Amongst other things, it's got an attic full of antique bicycles, and one of the other rooms has three different sets of samurai armour. The previous owner of Upton House was a very keen art collector, and towards the end of his life had resorted to smuggling newly acquired paintings into the house and hiding them under beds and on top of wardrobes so that his wife wouldn't find them (she was apparently finding the whole thing a bit exasperating by that stage). And one of Calke Abbey's last owners amassed considerably more stuffed birds than might be considered sensible - they've got about two or three rooms actually full of the things.