Thursday 14 March 2019

A Week in Somerset #5 - Montacute House NT

Hi there everyone 😀

The primary focus of our week's holiday in Somerset back in November last year was to visit the Longleat Festival of Light, which we did and it was amazing. If you've missed my posts about our visit you can catch up with our drive around The Winter Safari here, our first circuit of the lights in the daylight here and then again, all lit up, here.

We also managed to fit in plenty of other days out and about. We spent a lovely day in Wells and we also managed to take a couple of National Trust properties that weren't too far away.
Our first visit was to Montacute House, described by the National Trust as being ...
"A masterpiece of Elizabethan Renaissance architecture and design. With its towering walls of glass, glow of ham stone and surrounding garden, it is a place of beauty and wonder."
It was a bit of a grey day and, although rain was threatened, it was dry when we arrived so we decided to have a wander round the grounds first and then head inside a bit later on.

We started by finding our way round to the back of the house ...
... where we walked around the East Court, looking for signs of Autumn in the borders ...
... and taking in the views down into the parkland ...

We carried on round into the North Garden, where we were both pretty taken with the lumpy looking topiary ...
We followed it down to the bottom where we were heading for a gap in the hedge ...
... which led us down some steps ...
... which took us either out into the open parkland ...
... or to the ice house, which was our destination ...
It was then back through the hedge for a better look around the North Garden ...
 

... where I think it would be fair to say that Martin got more than a little obsessed with taking photos of the fountain ... 

I had a wander past the orangery ...

... and round to the front of the house ...

... where I did make a bit of an effort to walk down the West Drive ...

... to be able to look back and see the front of the house in all its glory ...

I was just making my way back up when Martin caught up with me ...
After a quick wander down to the stable block and a look around the second hand book store, we decided it was time to have a look inside ...

We didn't take any photographs inside and I'm not normally one for portraits but I did really enjoy the National Portrait Gallery displays where I actually learned that all three of Henry VIII's children, from three different mothers incidentally, went on to become monarch. I never really was a fan of history so apologies for my absolute ignorance of this fact, which I'm sure is not news to the majority of people.

So, that was about it, just two places left to visit ... the shop, where we didn't buy anything ... and the tea room ... where of course we did 😀

Another interesting property under our belts and another lovely afternoon out courtesy of the National Trust 😀

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2 comments:

  1. Beautiful place! I love to travel with you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you Elena ... I still have a few more Somerset posts to share and then we are off to Yorkshire, so plenty more travel posts on their way 😃

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking time to comment on my blog. I love to hear what people think about what Martin and I have been up to.