It has wonderful Victorian gardens and have recently added a great park which includes both horses and boats, the original owners passions.
There are over 30 rooms, ranging from grand reception rooms with their original furnishings, right through to the servants' quarters. I wasn't able to make many pictures though as cameras weren't allowed in some of the rooms.
The last actual resident of the house was Sylvia Grant-Dalton (wife of a descendant of Charles Sabine Augustus Thellusson), who fought a losing battle against subsidence and leaking roofs for 57 years. Costs began to mount. Following her death in 1988, English Heritage made the bold but highly successful decision to conserve the interiors 'as found' rather than replacing or restoring them, recounting the tale of how a once opulent Victorian house grew comfortably old and inviting to all. They took the decision to conserve rather than restore the house. It was kind of creepy that things were as the old lady had left them when she died, but fascinating all the same. I mean there was things like a Victorian writing desk with a 1970's phone on it.This room was a favourite of the kids, full of animals and sports equipment.
There was absolutely NO touching! But there were some exhibits that were child friendly :o)
Toilet.
computer, obviously a recent addition :o)
I wish that I could have taken more pictures of the house as it really was spectacular, shabby but oh so magnificent.
This was from the vast servant's quarters
One of my favourite rooms in the servants quarters :o)
This is the bakery. There was also a more modern kitchen as well as an ENORMOUS kitchen with all it's equipment that had been closed off when the last family members lived there. The house was so so so huge that you can understand why they just closed the doors.
Outside in the gardens we found some fungi
this was called something like a shabby ink ? Maybe I have got that wrong, but look at all of the black on the grass.
puff balls
The kids were all so excited when they spotted some grapes hanging overhead.
Being a witch
ivy waterfall
There were still tadpoles in the water!
Being a statue
We also found a pets graveyard.
Obviously a more recent pet. Most of the stones just had the pet name ingraved on them, but this one had the date too.
Can you see the symmetry? It was very popular with the Victorians and they even had it in their houses with all their fake doors, just to keep everything even.
Kiki named this dog Milly.
The most fabulous tree!
just look at it's rose-like pinecones.
and it's wide low hanging branches were perfect for climbing.
I wish that I had gotten one of the kids to stand at the bottom of this picture to highlight exactly how high Champ had climbed.
Eventually, I had to drag the kids away from the tree to go home as we were hitting rush-hour traffic time.
