Mottistone Gardens

FACT: every National Trust property has a story. Every single one. Sometimes you have to work a little bit harder to find that story, and so it was with Mottistone Gardens on the Isle of Wight. My usual extensive pre-visit research (ie reading the National Trust website) was giving me nothing, so I was overjoyed when I finally found something on a random CELEBRITY NEWZ OMG site; Benedict Cumberbatch had his wedding reception there.

His choice of venue wasn't random, however; his wife, Sophie Hunter, is the great-great-grand-daughter of Jack Seely, 1st Baron Mottistone, who once owned the place. More tireless investigation by me (ie a bit of Googling) revealed that his nickname had been "Galloper" Jack and he was also the grandfather of Brough Scott, the horse racing journalist, who had written a biography about him. So I read that and ended up with about 8,000 stories.

But let me tell you a bit about the property itself. The first thing you need to know is that the manor house is tenanted and closed to the general public. The second thing is that the gardens are not open on Fridays and Saturdays. And so, with the bad news out of the way, here are the highlights of what you can actually see:

1. The Shack
It doesn't exactly oversell itself - I expected it to be an ice cream kiosk or an information centre for bored kids on school trips - but it's an amazing little building.

The story behind it is as follows: John Seely, son of Galloper Jack, was an architect. He built The Shack in 1936 as a country retreat and working office for himself and his business partner, Paul Paget:

The outside of The Shack - those aren't real mushrooms,
just in case you're wondering

Seely & Paget restored Mottistone Manor, but the firm also took on a lot of ecclesiastical work - as well as building new churches they also helped to restore St Mary's Islington and others that had been damaged by the Blitz.

But it's the interior of The Shack that is really surprising. It has nearly everything - two beds, kitchen, toilet, desks, even a letterbox - and all with high quality finishing. It's quite something:

I thought I was quite committed to my job but
actually building a bed above your desk is a whole new level

The Gardens
There's plenty to see in the gardens. There's a huge double herbaceous border, a rose garden, a kitchen garden, a turf maze, even a scarecrow that looks like Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra:

"The sun is shining in the sky/There ain't a cloud in sight" -
yeah but are there any scones, Jeff?

The View from the Grassed Terraces
It takes about five minutes to walk up to the terraces above the gardens - it's well worth it for a lovely view over the Manor and out to sea:

It's OK - I know these people. They weren't
just following me around, photobombing

But let's return to Galloper Jack. There are about 8,000 quotable stories about him in the biography - he was a great friend of Winston Churchill and shared a similar life history of military and political derring-do - but here are the five key things you need to know:

• He had more near-death experiences than any other human - his first happened when he was nine years old and he felt 70 feet from a cliff 
• He didn't exactly try to avoid death after that lucky escape - he manned the lifeboat on the Isle of Wight from a relatively young age, he fought in the Boer War, and he survived four years on the battlefields of France and Belgium during World War One
• His horse, Warrior, was his spirit animal - it was a true life war horse, somehow surviving the full four years of battle that did for 8 million other horses. At one point Warrior was stabled in a house that was hit by a shell - Galloper Jack turned to his companion and said "that's the end of Warrior" only to see that one corner of the house was still standing. Inside was Warrior, holding up a joist. The men tried to free him but the horse decided to take decisive action himself and jumped free, at which point the rest of the building collapsed. There are many, many stories like this.
• He also fitted in a career as an MP and was Secretary of State for War at one point (Jack, not Warrior)
• It all ended a bit sadly for Jack - having been a hero for so much of his life, he backed the wrong horse completely in the 1930s and became an appeaser. He met with Hitler and Mussolini and appears to have been hoodwinked by them both, although especially by Hitler who persuaded him that the Hitler Youth was just like the Scouts.

It's an interesting book about a very colourful man of his time. He died in 1947 and his architect son became the 2nd Baron Mottistone. (Jack's eldest son, Frank, fought with him in France and died at Arras.) John gave the estate to the National Trust when he died in 1963.

The Mottistone scone
But let's move on. Sadly there is no Scone Horse to accompany me on my expeditions, although I'm not sure they'd have let one on the Isle of Wight ferry anyway. Instead, I recruited my in-laws for the voyage. It wasn't their first rodeo - two of them had accompanied me to Lamb House in Rye last year, where they had stunned me with a stinging critique of the scone. At Croft Castle the scones were so good that nobody had a bad word to say. So how would Mottistone fare?

The short answer is that we found scone perfection. They were fresh and light and tasty and got a unanimous thumbs up from the panel. The service was great, and the outdoor tea room by The Shack was a beautiful place to sit on a sunny Sunday morning.  

So that means that the Isle of Wight has ended up with an enviable 100% record for National Trust scones. You can read about our earlier trip to The Needles Old Battery, which not only scooped 5 scone stars but were my Scone of the Year for 2017.

Mottistone: 4 out of 5
Scone: 5 out of 5
Levels of derring-do by Mottisfont owners and their horses: 5 out of 5

The Needles Old Battery

The Isle of Wight has been calling me for years, metaphorically speaking. I remember at primary school there were always kids coming back from holidays wielding little glass objects in the shape of boots or swans filled with amazing coloured sand that they'd got from the IoW. Although, now I come to think of it, I never owned a glass swan filled with coloured sand, which probably means I didn't have any friends. 

Anyway. If you look at the map you could be forgiven for thinking that the NT owns the Isle of Wight. They have several properties there and they're all lovely and everything but only one does scones*. And so we found ourselves at The Needles Old Battery. 

Five things we saw today:

1. The Needles!
The Needles are a row of three chalk rocks sticking up out of the sea, just off the west coast of the Isle of Wight. The Needles Lighthouse stands at the end of the row. It was built in 1859 and is still working today.

There used to be four chalk rocks. One apparently looked like a needle, hence the name. That pillar (known as Lot's Wife) collapsed during a storm in 1764, leaving the non-needle-like Needles. They look more like jaggedy shark fins to me, but I appreciate that jaggedy shark fins doesn't have the same ring to it.

This is apparently how The Needles used to look when the actual Needle-like rock was still there.

2. The Old Battery!
The Old Battery was built in the 1860s. It was part of a chain of forts that was constructed to protect against a French invasion. The forts were hugely expensive and France never got round to invading, so they're known as 'Palmerston's follies', after the Prime Minister who ordered them.

I apologise for the lack of photos of the Old Battery. I was too busy taking 600 pictures of the Jagged Shark Fins/Needles from every possible angle but here's a snap of the tunnels:

3. The New Battery!
Not content with an Old Battery that hadn't exactly earned its keep, the British government decided to build the New Battery in the 1890s to house larger guns. The site saw no major action in World War I but anti-aircraft guns were fired from the Battery in World War II.

But what is very exciting indeed is that from 1954 to 1972 the New Battery was used as a secret missile test site called Highdown. 60 ft rockets, called Black Knight and Black Arrow, were built up the road in East Cowes and tested at Highdown. They were then taken to Woomera near Adelaide in Australia to be launched into space. 

I was expecting the New Battery to be like something out of Thunderbirds, and it probably was a bit James Bondian back in the 1950s and 1960s when the control rooms and laboratories were filled with boffins. 

It's not quite like that today - the British rocket program ended very suddenly in 1971 and the site was dismantled - but the replicas of the rockets and of this satellite called Prospero (the only British satellite ever launched, which still passes overhead twice a day and will do so for another 200+ years) did lend a bit of rocket science excitement.

4. Alum Bay!
I also got to see my coloured sand, albeit from afar. This is a rubbish picture, but you can just about see the different colours in the cliff. You used to be able to go and shovel up your own sand, but that was stopped because of erosion. 

5. The Needles Scones!
I was a tad worried about this scone mission, to tell you the truth. Our last outing, to Chedworth Roman Villa, had resulted in no scones at all (nice fruit cake though) and the Isle of Wight involves a ferry and a bit of effort.  

But I need not have worried, scone fans, because The Old Battery delivered the goods. The tearoom is smashing - it's set out in 1940s style with lovely teapots and teacups. It reminded me of the similarly lovely tea room at South Foreland Lighthouse. 

The scone was fresh, light, and tasty with lovely jam and cream. A unanimous five out of five from me and the Scone Sidekick.

So there you have it - you can add 'Cold War missile testing site' to the list of things that the NT looks after. I'll have to go to Dolaucothi Gold Mines next to get the full set of quirky places.

The Needles Old Battery: 4 out of 5
Scone: 5 out of 5
Coloured sand-scooping opportunities: 0 out of 5

* I later discovered that this wasn't true - Mottistone Gardens also serves scones and so I high-tailed it back over on the ferry. Read more about the Mottistone scones.