Newark Park

Here's a fascinating fact about Newark Park: it's a registered war memorial. I didn't know a house and 700 acres of land could be a war memorial but the whole place was left to the National Trust in 1949 by Mrs Power-Clutterbuck, in memory of her son, James. He died in combat in 1917, after his plane was shot down by Manfred von Richtofen, otherwise known as 'The Red Baron'. And so Newark Park is officially listed on the War Memorials Register. 

But there are many other things you need to know about Newark Park. Firstly, it's not in Newark, but in Gloucestershire. 

It was originally a hunting lodge!

A Tudor courtier with a very brilliant name built the first hunting lodge around 1550. Sir Nicholas Poyntz had purchased the land from Henry VIII, as it had previously belonged to Kingswood Abbey before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It became his 'New Worke', hence the name. He died in 1556, deep in debt.

Getting into the Tudor spirit of things

The Clutterbucks turned it into a Georgian mansion!

Debt seems to have been a recurring theme for owners of Newark Park - the next few people to take it on also had to sell up when they got into financial difficulties. Stability arrived in 1769, when the house was bought by James Clutterbuck. It was then inherited by his 3rd cousin, Lewis Clutterbuck who became the Reverend for the church in nearby Ozleworth. Lewis and his son (also Lewis) made a lot of changes to the property and to the gardens.

The Clutterbucks rented it out!

From 1867, the Clutterbucks rented the place out to various families who also extended the place and made changes. 

Bob Parsons comes to the rescue!

The National Trust initially let the property and it became a nursing home in the 1950s and 1960s. The house and gardens deteriorated. Then in 1970 an American architect called Bob Parsons took on a repairing lease and dedicated his life to restoring the place. He had been stationed in the UK during the war and returned afterwards, living in East Anglia and London before settling at Newark Park. He died in 2000.

I'm not sure I like this painting of Bob and his dog Trudi,
but he loved it so who am I to argue

It has a crinkle crankle wall!

I'm not going to lie to you, readers: I had never even heard of crinkle crankle walls until I read about them at Newark Park. I tweeted about it and then crinkle crankle walls seemed to stalk me on social media for the rest of the week. They're everywhere, apparently. Here's one map of crinkle crankle walls in Suffolk. I'm not sure how useful this will be to you, but it gives you some idea of their popularity.

The Newark Park Scone

I was accompanied on today's scone mission by my oldest friends, Lisa, Sarah and Kathy, along with the young scone apprentice, Lara. It wasn't their first outing - they had also come to Horsey Windpump back in 2019. On that occasion, we travelled by boat along the Norfolk Broads so I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to offer the same excitement at Newark Park.

But Montsaye Comprehensive girls are nothing if not resourceful and we turned today's outing into an exciting affair by getting completely lost on our walk around the estate.

Luckily, I had forced everyone to have the scone as soon as we got there. The cafeteria at Newark Park is really just a well-equipped counter with a tent for rainy occasions. I was very doubtful that scones would even be on the menu but they were and we had good weather, so our luck was well and truly in.

The scone looked great - nice and golden and fruity. And it was tasty enough - it was a little chewy for my liking but it was lovely to sit outside on a warm October day. 

Eating scones is great but eating them with brilliant people is even better - massive thanks to my lovely crew for our Cotswolds adventure. Only three more places to visit!

Newark Park: 4 out of 5

Scone: 4 out of 5 from both me and the scone apprentice; 4, 3.5, 3.5 from the others

Crinkle crankle wall education opportunities: 5 out of 5

Snowshill Manor and Garden

Snowshill Manor is home to 22,000 objects collected by its former owner, Charles Wade. I initially felt an affinity with him, as I too have 22,000 objects in my home, collected by me. 

However if the National Trust was to open my house to the public, they'd find that around 10,000 of those objects were little plastic bags containing a spare button that come attached to new clothes, and another 10,000 were hair bands that seem to be everywhere when I'm hoovering, but evaporate into thin air whenever I actually need a hair band.

The collection at Snowshill Manor doesn't include any such trivialities. I would say that, of all the NT properties I have been to, Snowshill is the hardest to put into words. But I will try. 

Who was Charles Wade?

• Charles Paget Wade was an eccentric - it's the word that gets used over and over again about him in the book A Thousand Fancies
• He was born in 1883 to a family that owned sugar plantations on St Kitts
• His grandfather, Solomon, married Mary Jones, a black woman who had been born free rather than as a slave - she was believed to have been his housekeeper
• Their son, Paget, was born in the West Indies but the family moved back to the UK where Paget eventually met his wife, Amy, and they had Charles
• Charles hated school - he called them "factories of boredom" - and when he left he became an architect
• He had always loved well-designed and beautiful things and he began collecting - everything from weapons to costumes to carriages
• He was eventually called up to fight in World War I - while he was on the Western Front he saw Snowshill Manor advertised in Country Life magazine
• He bought Snowshill in 1919
• He turned the Manor House into a home for his collections
• Queen Mary came to visit and apparently said that the finest thing in his collection "was Mr Wade himself"
• Other visitors included Virginia Woolf, John Buchan, Graham Greene, and John Betjeman 

At first, Charles reminded me of Catweazle - a wizard from a bygone era who somehow ended up in the 20th century. His eccentric hair and dress sense certainly set him apart from the crowd - apparently when he left the solicitor's office after buying Snowshill for £3,500, someone handed him the money for a cup of tea thinking he had fallen on hard times:

Charles Paget Wade. He was denounced as "a fraud" by Virginia Woolf,
because she said he pretended not to have a watch and she missed her train

But then I decided he was actually Private Godfrey from Dad's Army; during the Second World War, Charles joined the Home Guard. He was much slower at marching than the others, but they charitably put that down to him having been in the Royal Engineers, who apparently marched at a slower pace. He also once asked to fire the platoon's Lewis gun but he fell over while he was trying to lie down to get in a shooting position and the gun went off into the sky. He resigned soon after.

My other favourite story was how he recruited his gardener: "to maintain his own authority and ownership he instead chose a hardworking man from among the builders, William Hodge, whose name and mauve hat were also to his liking."

What is there to see in the Manor?
I expected Snowshill Manor to be like an antiques shop - just loads of stuff thrown about. But it absolutely is not like that. 

The first two rooms are quite misleading, in that they seem quite ordinary and sedate. But as you push on through the house, you find the most bizarre things, from a tableau of scary-looking samurai warriors to a room that is chock-full of bikes:

Try winning the Tour de France on one of these, Chris Froome

Where did Charles live?
Charles didn't live in the Manor - that was for his collections. He lived in the Priest's House opposite. Sometimes at the NT you see one room that sums up the person completely - maybe Rudyard Kipling's study at Bateman's or Vita Sackville West's study at Sissinghurst - and Chas's bedroom does exactly that. He definitely wasn't your typical 1920s landowner:

The panelled 'box' on the left that looks like something from a crematorium
was Charles' bed - I'm not sure I'd have slept well in it but each to their own

What was my favourite item in the Manor?
I read a pretty scathing TripAdvisor review before we went to Snowshill that said "it's just a load of tat". I quite like tat so I wasn't worried. But I warned the Scone Sidekick and said "if it's a bit boring, let's just pick our favourite thing?" I promptly forgot about this until he reminded me. I decided to go with these masks:

What was the Scone Sidekick's favourite item in the Manor?
It's funny the things that you discover about your loved ones. Today I found out that my partner of over ten years has a thing for sedan chairs. It's not a deal-breaker or anything, but it was a bit surprising.

Also - the person that wrote "it's just a load of tat" on TripAdvisor needs their head examined. 

The Snowshill scone
But let's move on to the all-important scone. I had foolishly expected Snowshill to be quite quiet on a Thursday but it was absolutely heaving - a coach party pulled up just as we were arriving, forcing me and the Scone Sidekick to make like those racewalking athletes in the Olympics and waddle our way at speed down to the tea room.  

The scone itself was tasty - maybe a little dry, but I ate it all and I enjoyed it.

I highly recommend Snowshill Manor. It's very, very unusual.

Snowshill Manor: 5 out of 5
Scone: 4.5 out of 5
Charles Wade's gardener recruitment criteria: 5 out of 5

Chedworth Roman Villa

Did you know that there are over 450 Roman villa remains in the UK? I did not know this. I very stupidly thought that about 20 Romans came over to Britain; a few of them stayed in London and built a couple of things there, a few went north to sort out Hadrian's Wall, and a few went to Bath. 

But I was wrong, as usual. A quick look on Wikipedia shows that even in my home county of Northamptonshire there are several villages that I thought were entirely featureless that actually have the remains of a Roman villa in them. Amazing.

Thanks to a lovely tour guide called Julian, I learned a lot more at Chedworth Roman Villa near Cheltenham today. We hadn't planned to join a tour, but one was starting as we arrived so we tagged along expecting to wander off at some point. But an hour later, I was still hanging on Julian's every word as he pointed things out that we would never have noticed without him. So Chedworth Tip One: join the tour.

1. Who discovered Chedworth?

• The villa was discovered in 1864 by a man called James Farrer 
• His nephew owned the estate, and one day a gamekeeper found some tesserae (little cubes that were used to make Roman mosaics), which he showed to James
• Jimbo wasted no time - he was a keen antiquarian and he soon had a band of men digging the place up
• In one summer they uncovered pretty much everything that we see today
• He built a museum in the middle of the excavated site on the spoils from the clearance - I was really disappointed by this, as I thought someone had accidentally built a house here and then discovered it was bang in the middle of a Roman villa. But no.
• 
  

2. When was it built?

• Some simple structures were built on the site in the 2nd century AD
• From the 330s to the 380s, the villa was extended and had its heyday - the west range and north wing housed the main reception rooms, while the south wing was a service area with a kitchen and a toilet
• But then in the early 5th century, Britain ceased to be part of the Roman Empire - the collapse of the Roman system brought the decline of luxurious villas like the one at Chedworth
• The once beautiful, elegant rooms would have been used for keeping animals until eventually the buildings started to collapse and rot away

3. Who lived there?

• The short answer: nobody knows
• However, it would have been someone of consequence - it was a big, luxurious villa that would probably have been owned by someone involved in the administration of nearby Cirencester
• Hairpins and children's bracelets have been found, suggesting that a family lived there

4. What is there to see?

• The outline of parts of the villa is visible - the Victorians used what stones were left to reconstruct the general footprint
• The nymphaeum, or shrine to the nymphs, is situated in the top corner of the villa - Julian's pictures came in handy at this point:

Good old Julian showing us what the shrine
would have looked like in the 4th century

• But the real show-stopper is the mosaic work in the west range - the pictures below really don't do it justice:

The huge mosaic in the dining room with its scantily clad ladies -
Julian got a lot of interest in those

The west bath house

• We also got to see the pilae that would have been used to create the hypocaust system for heating the rooms - they're in their puffa jackets to protect them from the elements at the moment:

5. What didn't we see?

• Snails. Apparently the Romans liked eating snails and brought some of their favoured variety with them. A few plucky gastropods made a run for it and escaped the cooking pot, taking up residence in the vicinity AND THEY'RE STILL THERE TODAY! Not the same ones obviously, but their descendants continue to squelch their way around the villa 1700 years later. 

• More mosaics. Amazingly, some of the mosaics were covered over again post-excavation, as they'd be destroyed if left open to the elements. So you walk round on grass verges knowing that there are stunning patterns beneath your feet.

• Scones.

I was very disappointed by the lack of scones but let's be clear; this was scone mission #153. My rough guess is that of 153 properties visited, only five have failed to deliver scones when I would have expected some to have been available. That's not too bad.

Anyway. I had dragged the Sidekick some distance and we were both hungry, so he had carrot cake and I had fruit cake. And they were both DELICIOUS.

I was so disappointed that I couldn't even be bothered to turn it the right way up
for the photo. Then I tried it and it was absolutely lovely.

I've been pretty lucky with this Scone Odyssey so far. Every time a scone fails to materialise or impress, the property turns out to be brilliant - see also Penrhyn Castle and Coleton Fishacre. With 100 properties left to go, long may that continue.

Finally - a word about guided tours at the NT. I rarely join them and I really don't know why, because they are always useful. Red House, Acorn Bank, Quebec House - all of these properties were brought to life by an NT tour guide. So take my advice, readers: IT'S NOT A CHORE, SO DO THE TOUR. (You can have that for free, National Trust marketing team.)

Chedworth Roman Villa if you do the tour*: 5 out of 5
Scones: 0 out of 5 - there weren't any
Fruit cake: 5 out of 5

* I don't know what it would be like if you didn't follow a tour guide, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be as good.

Hidcote

I try to avoid National Trust gardens, as they are very dangerous places. I always end up walking around thinking "A white garden - what could be simpler. I could definitely do this at my house," while ignoring stuff in the guide book like "Hidcote took 30 years to create" "the owner was a very rich man" "there are 9 full time gardeners at Hidcote" etc.

But I threw caution to the wind today and went to Hidcote near Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. And I'm very glad I did, because it's a beautiful place.

Here are some highlights:

1. The manor house!

The house was originally built in the late 17th century as a farmhouse. It was bought by Lawrence Johnston and his mother in 1907.

2. Gertrude Winthrop!
Gertrude was the mother of Lawrence Johnston. She was from a wealthy New York family (they made rope) and she married Lawrence's father, Elliott, who was from a wealthy Baltimore family (they were bankers). They got divorced and she married a wealthy man called Charles Francis Winthrop (he was a retired stockbroker). When Lawrence decided to settle in the Cotswolds, she came with him and bought Hidcote.

3. Lawrence Johnston!
Lawrence spent his early life going back and forth between Europe and the US. In 1900 he became a British citizen and joined the Northumberland Hussars to serve in the Boer War. While he was with them, he decided to find a permanent residence and came across Hidcote - it was perfect, both for the many friends he had in the area and because it allowed him to pursue what became his life's work; plants and gardens.

4. Development of the garden!
Johnston started work on the garden right away, creating 'garden rooms' around the manor house in the Arts and Crafts style. There was a hiatus while he went to fight in the First World War, but the 1920s and 1930s were the glory days of Hidcote. It was visited by Edith Wharton, Vita Sackville-West, and other eminences. 

5. The gardens today!
There are 37 areas listed on the map that you can walk round, although I was surprised at how tightly packed it all was - you can easily walk round it in less than an hour, although if you actually want to look at the plants then you'll need a lot longer. 

There's a White Garden, a Maple Garden, the Red Borders, a Fuschia Garden, a Pillar Garden with clipped yew trees as below, and lots more;

There's also a bit of wildlife wandering around; the Scone Sidekick decided to investigate a bustle in a nearby hedgerow at one point, expecting to find a squirrel, and nearly had his head taken off by an annoyed cockerel.

6. The National Trust!
Lawrence eventually decided to move to France, where his mother had bought a place. He contacted James Lees-Milne at the National Trust to see if the NT would take on the upkeep of Hidcote. We have seen before that James L-M was not the kindest of people - he described Lawrie as "a dull little man" who was "mother-ridden". Anyway - the NT wasn't sure about the idea and then they were and in 1948 the papers were signed.

7. The Hidcote scones!
I had another scone scare today, following my Room 101 scenario at Kedleston Hall last week, where I saw a waiter walking around with a sign saying "SOLD OUT - FRUIT SCONES". Stuff of nightmares.

Anyway, I joined the tea queue today and realised that there were only two scones left on the counter and three people in front of me. Even with my poor maths, I knew I was in trouble.

I also knew I had to act fast. I recalled a Victoria Wood sketch where the Julie Walters character tries to take the last two croissants and so Victoria grabs them and licks them. However, I wasn't sure that this would go down too well in a National Trust tearoom? Luckily, by the time I had talked myself out of that course of action, the three women in front of me had decided to stick with coffee only and so I was able to seize my scones without being thrown out.

The trouble with taking the last scone is that it's often the runt of the litter. This scone looked quite small and flat and I was very concerned about it (in other words I moaned for five full minutes to the Scone Sidekick until he asked me to stop). But it was absolutely delicious - it was fresh as a daisy and really tasty.

Hidcote reminded me a lot of Nymans - a beautiful place that somehow manages to cope with huge numbers of visitors while retaining a lovely relaxed atmosphere. I highly recommend it.

Hidcote: 5 out of 5 
Scones: 5 out of 5
Unexpected cockerel: 5 out of 5

Dyrham Park

If I were in charge of the finances of a National Trust property, my favourite words in the world would probably be 'coach party' or, maybe a bit more ambitiously, 'billionaire Mark Zuckerberg discovers his ancestors built National Trust estate'.

But my most hated words would definitely be 'roof repairs'. It must be GALLING to have to replace the roof on a stately home. It must cost MILLIONS OF POUNDS for something that nobody can really see. If someone offers to sell me a raffle ticket to restore a fishpond currently containing an old shopping trolley and a mattress, I'm all over it. A summer house with no glass that needs repairing? Delighted to help. But a roof? Are you sure you can't just put a tarpaulin over it?

Dyrham Park near Bath replaced its roof last year. It cost - pass the smelling salts, mother - £3.8 MILLION POUNDS. 

It's also very disruptive to replace a roof. The whole house was covered in scaffolding while the work went on, which must have put a lot of visitors off. It certainly put me off. But the staff at Dyrham did a brilliant thing; they made a feature of it. You could actually go up on the roof and see the replacement works going on. I think that's such a brave and clever thing to do - much better than just claiming everything is business as usual, even though 90% of the rooms are shut so disgruntled visitors pile onto TripAdvisor to complain.

ANYWAY. The scaffolding is down, so I got to see the outside of the house properly. And it's a beautiful house - you can either walk from the visitor centre or you can catch the shuttle bus, but in either case you get a lovely view as you come over the hill and look down into the valley.

So here's some history about Dyrham:

• In 1571, a man called George Wynter and his brother William bought Dyrham manor and park
• George helped to finance Sir Francis Drake's voyage around the world, which nearly ruined him - but that's a whole other story
• Dyrham eventually passed to his great-grand-daughter, Mary Wynter
• Mary married William Blathwayt, a very successful civil servant who had risen to become Secretary at War for James II. We can only wonder what first attracted him to the rich, estate-owning Mary Wynter. 
• Over 13 years William transformed Dyrham - he used local supplies as was normal for the time, but he also used his colonial network to bring timber from Virginia and materials from other parts of the world
• He survived quite a few twists and turns in his career - he was booted out of his job after the removal of James II, but William of Orange realised that he needed a man who could speak Dutch, so back came our William Blathwayt
• His ancestors were pretty happy with a quiet country life and the house continued to be passed down through the family
• It was leased out, but when that ended in 1946 the future looked bleak - sheep were even found wandering through the house at one stage
• Dyrham was passed to the National Trust in 1961

In another INGENIOUS move, Dyrham staff also serve up FREE HOT CHOCOLATE in the orangery. It was lovely - a little bit spicy. Here's the recipe if you're ever in the mood for a 17th century hot chcolate:

The Dyrham Park scone
But on to the 21st century scones. I recently had the privilege of spending a morning baking scones with Clive Goudercourt, the Development Chef at the National Trust. He showed me how the perfect scone should have a 'mouth' - ie, as it rises, the scone should split slightly so that it can be divided easily by hand without a knife. 

So when I looked at my Dyrham scone I shook my head sadly at the Scone Sidekick. "There's no mouth on this one, Sidekick," I said. "I've got insider information on this now. This one won't pass muster." He looked slightly baffled and tucked into his scone as I bit into mine. "Actually, it's not bad," I said. Another bite. "It's actually really good." Last mouthful. "Top marks, I'd say." He gave me a slightly tired look that said 'do you actually even know what you're talking about?' But bravo to the Dyrham scone baker.

So I really take my hat off to Dyrham. They're trying very hard to keep the place going during the ongoing conservation works and that can't be easy, plus top class scones and hot chocolate to boot.

Dyrham Park: 4 out of 5
Scones: 5 out of 5
Whoever suggested the hot chocolate idea: 5 out of 5