The Best National Trust Scones (So Far)

The National Trust Scone Blog is one this weekend! Happy Birthday, blog! 

I thought it only right to thank all of the National Trust properties that have made the past 12 months so sconetabulous.

We've visited 50 properties this year in 23 counties, and we've eaten 70 scones. 4 properties had no scones but 17 - yes 17! - were awarded the Scone D'Or for scone excellence! 

Eyes down for the full list of 17, in order of visit:

Stowe

It costs £30,000 a year to send your child to school at Stowe. I've worked out that you could get around 17,647 scones for that. I know which one I'd spend my money on. Educate yourself (ha!) about the Stowe scones...

Charlecote Park
William Shakespeare was once caught stealing a scone from Charlecote Park. It forced him to leave Warwickshire for London. Did I say scone? I meant deer. The scones at Charlecote were scone perfection though, so it's an easy mistake to make. Read more about the scones at Charlecote Park...

Bateman's
"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And continue with your National Trust Scone Mission just the same" - I'm paraphrasing one-time Bateman's resident Rudyard Kipling a bit there, but it's an apt motto for the scone blogger. We definitely met Scone Triumph at Bateman's - read more about the Bateman's scones...

Claremont Landscape Garden
Claremont surprised us on many levels. First, it's more of a lovely big park than a garden. Second, it served the fluffiest scones we had ever seen (until we went to Standen a week later). Read about Claremont's scones... 

Standen

Standen deliver when it comes to scones - we thought nothing could outfluff Claremont's scone but we were wrong. Tests proved that the Standen scone was genetically closer to a cloud than a baked foodstuff. Read about the Standen scone...

Nymans

"You must go to Nymans in West Sussex," I was told by about 8 million people "because it is absolutely wonderful and the scones are delicious." I finally went and it was absolutely wonderful and the scones were delicious. You must go there. Read about Nymans scones...

Waddesdon Manor

It might look like a tornado has picked up a French chateau and dropped it just off the M40, but Waddesdon near Aylesbury ticks every box in the scone blogger's guide to National Trust awesomeness, ie it has an audio guide and the scone was perfect in every way. Read about the Waddesdon scone...

Scotney Castle 

I spent 20 minutes of my time at Scotney Castle in Kent sheltering under a tree from a torrential downpour. I was never so pleased to see a pot of tea and a scone in all my life. And the scones were EPIC. Scotney also won credit for having a Banana and Walnut Scone of the Month, and for Richard Gere, who filmed Yanks there. Read all about the Scotney scones...

Dunwich Heath

I came home from my Dunwich Heath mission near Ipswich in need of therapy and a 3-day gym session - they had 20 TYPES OF SCONE at their Sconeathon in March, including Sticky Toffee, Chocolate Orange, Malteser...it would be easier to think of things they hadn't included. The Sticky Toffee Scone left us uncharacteristically speechless. Read about the Dunwich Sconeathon...

Morden Hall Park
Our first scone mission of 2014 was not the frosty, blue-skied January experience we expected, but the biblical deluge made the scones at Morden Hall Park in South London all the more welcome. They were phenomenal - big, warm, and glazed (a first). 'Morden enough' to warrant a five out of five (ha ha ha! Sorry.) Read about the Morden Hall Park scones...

Sutton House
Hackney is famous for many things - marshes, young men growing massive beards - but the National Trust scone blogger is going to add SCONES to that list. Sir Ralph Sadleir, who appears in the book Wolf Hall, built Sutton House and it's well worth a visit. Read about the Sutton House scones...

Quarry Bank Mill

Quarry Bank Mill near Wilmslow is a big and slightly troubling place, if you allow yourself to dwell on the misery of the lives of the orphans that slaved there in dreadful conditions in the 19th century. The scone was big but not troubling at all - it was just delicious. Read about Quarry Bank Mill's scone...

Flatford Bridge Cottage

Alright, we helped bake the scones at Flatford but that's not why we gave them 5 out of 5. We gave them 5 because they were mince pie scones and they were ruddy delicious. The cottage and landscape where John Constable painted The Hay Wain were stunning too. Read about the Flatford scones...

Winkworth Arboretum
They keep the scones in a bread bin at Winkworth Arboretum, which caused some initial palpitations that they didn't have any. We forgave them for our distress though when we tasted the scones. Read about the Winkworth scones...

Houghton Mill
The scone blogger will admit to having been extremely hungover on the day she visited Houghton Mill (the night before had been the party for her first schoolfriend to turn 40, enough said) and a scone was quite literally the last thing she wanted to eat, but the Houghton scone, baked with flour milled on-site, was too delicious to be resisted. Read about the Houghton Mill scone...

Brownsea Island
We didn't see any of the things that Brownsea is famous for (scouts, red squirrels and John Lewis employees), but we did see some magnificent scones. Read about the Brownsea Island scone...

Bodiam Castle
Bodiam Castle is one of those castles that looks like it was drawn by a 6 year-old - a true fortress in every sense of the word. Bodiam also delivered scones that were delicious in every sense of the word too - our very first 5 out of 5, setting the benchmark for all others. Read about the Bodiam Castle scone...

This is the tip of the iceberg, though - there are hundreds of other National Trust properties, many of which have amazing scones that we need to try. 

A quick bit of maths suggests that the National Trust Scone Odyssey will take around 5 years to complete but we'll soldier on in our quest. 

I'm going to end by thanking all the sconepals that have tweeted and Facebooked and everything else this year - you're all sconetabulous.

Stowe

It costs £30,000 to send your child to school at Stowe. I thought to myself; 'That's a lot of money. But if it guarantees you 7 years of education, 36 A'levels, and a network of friends who probably have to try quite hard NOT to be successful in life, then I can see how a certain type of person would think it worth it.' But it's £30,000 A YEAR, readers. A YEAR. Still, some people pay it - Richard Branson went there, as did Prince Harry's former squeeze, Chelsy Davy. 

But let's be clear: the National Trust owns the gardens at Stowe, not the school, so I've split this post into three chunks: the house, the gardens, the scones.

1. The House
Stowe House has been a school since 1923 and NT visitors can only marvel at its exterior. This is my single picture of Stowe House, taken during the torrential downpour that lasted for pretty much the entire duration of my visit - I'd taken my sister along, so naturally something had to go wrong and it was the weather:

The core of the house was built in 1677-1683. Various parts were rebuilt and extended throughout the 1700s until the 2nd Duke of Buckingham went bankrupt in 1848 and the contents of the house were sold. It was eventually saved by the people that turned it into a school.

2. Stowe Gardens 

The National Trust has looked after the gardens at Stowe since 1990. They were created mainly by Viscount Cobham and his nephew Richard, Earl Temple, who inherited Stowe in 1752. Many illustrious talents worked on the gardens, including Sir John Vanburgh, William Kent, James Gibbs, and 'Capability' Brown, and it became a popular visitor attraction in the 18th century.

There are three main paths at Stowe: the Path of Vice, the Path of Virtue, and the Path of Liberty. As you walk round, you come across 30 or so statues, temples, and other buildings - there were others, but they've been demolished over the years.

We took the Path of Liberty, which was one of the last areas of the gardens to be developed. In this view, you can see the Gothic Temple, Lord Cobham's pillar, and the Palladian Bridge:

I will advise that you don't make the same mistakes as us: if you go to Stowe, set aside a good three hours minimum to see the sights and don't go when it's pouring down. And if you do happen to go during wet weather, don't wear open-toed shoes, as they don't combine well with rain and sheep poo.

But here are a couple of highlights to whet your appetite.

The Palladian Bridge was completed in 1736 and was probably designed by James Gibbs. It provided a nice sheltered spot for visitors, and it really did serve that purpose for us today:

The Gothic Temple was completed in 1748 and was also designed by Gibbs. It commemorates the British liberty of Saxon kings like King Alfred, as opposed to Roman tyranny. Apparently, it's now a holiday cottage:

And that is sadly as far as we got before we had to admit defeat and make our way like two drowned rats back to shelter out of the rain. There's loads more to see, though, and I will definitely be back.

3. The Stowe Scones
I had really high hopes for today's scone, purely because Stowe was the 50th stop on the National Trust Scone Odyssey and I felt that this deserved a 'golden' scone. But as we've seen before, high hopes are a risky business when it comes to scones. 

The tea room at Stowe was lovely (it looked very new) and the scones were beautiful dinky little things. Then I cut into one and my heart sank - it looked really dry (which was a bit ironic considering the torrential deluge that was battering off the windows). But it didn't taste dry at all. These scones were dense, sweet and tasty as anything. Top marks and five house points to Stowe.

I then went home and tried to dry off, a task made somewhat easier by the radiant evening sunshine that streamed in through the windows and made it impossible to watch the TV. I felt like getting back in the car and returning to Stowe but that'll have to wait for another day.

And so that completes 50 National Trust scone missions. We're taking a few weeks off but look out for the scone blog's 1st birthday round-up of Top National Trust Scones in two weeks' time. 

Stowe: 4 out of 5

Scones: 5 out of 5

Man rescuing us from the mud in his little golf buggy: 5 out of 5

Moseley Old Hall

I'm not having a go at my history teachers here, but I reckon with a semi-decent lawyer and a copy of the Trade Descriptions Act, I could probably sue them. 

I just don't remember history being very well structured at my school. We did the Tudors. We did the Romans. I have a vague recollection of the Spinning Jenny. We did 'Medicine Through Time' but I only remember the bit about sailors sticking amputated limb stumps into boiling tar. And then a term spent on Sino-Soviet relations (WHY?). 

So I went to Moseley Old Hall near Wolverhampton today knowing that I'd probably meet a few toddlers with a better grasp of the life and times of Charles II than I had.

Moseley Old Hall is amazing. It's a really unusual National Trust property, in that it was given one chance of fame and it took that chance, a bit like Susan Boyle or Pippa Middleton. Over the course of two days in September 1651 it went from being just someone's house near Cannock to securing centuries of fame for itself as the place that hid a king with a price on his head. 

The story goes: Charles I was executed in 1649, leaving the hopes of Monarchists on the shoulders of his son, Charles II. In 1651, Charles II marched south from Scotland with an army of 16,000 men to reclaim the throne. However, he was soundly beaten at the Battle of Worcester on 3rd September and was forced to go on the run.

On 8th September he arrived at Moseley Old Hall, bedraggled and tired. On his way to Moseley he had stayed at Boscobel House where he had famously hidden in an oak tree while Roundhead soldiers searched for him nearby (thereby giving hundreds of pubs their name, The Royal Oak). 

Moseley Old Hall had been built in 1600 and was owned by Thomas Whitgreave. Thomas was Catholic and had been hiding a priest, Father Huddlestone. It was in Moseley's priest hole that Charles II spent his first night at the house.

The unfortunate thing about priest holes is that they're not very photogenic. This picture looks like the entrance to someone's not-particularly-interesting cellar. But it is the actual spot where Charles II hid, even though he was 6'2" and a king. Apparently when shown it, he said it was "the best place he was ever in", which makes me really like him:

The second night they allowed him to rest on a bed, and that bed is still there today in The King's Room. However, troops arrived at the house to arrest Whitgreave for being involved in the battle, which he was not, and so the King was forced back into his hidey hole. He then left Moseley to continue on to Bristol, disguised as a servant.

It's a story that would defy belief if you made it up, but it happened and Charles eventually made it to the Continent, thanks to men and women like Thomas Whitgreave.

I love the end of the story too: when Charles II lay dying in 1685, he asked for Father Huddlestone, who gave him the last rites. This is Father Huddlestone's chapel at Moseley:

The Moseley Scone
I was so engrossed in the story that I almost forgot to stop for a scone. The scone at Moseley Old House was very good. If I was being finicky, it maybe wasn't quite as fresh as the other scones I've had lately but it was a nice-looking scone and very tasty. I am sure that Charles would have declared it "the best scone he had ever seen" had he been offered it in 1651.

The only thing that wasn't absolutely brilliant at Moseley was the shop. I've read two great books this year, neither of which I had heard of until I picked them up in National Trust shops, namely A Circle of Sisters from Bateman's and Wedlock from Gibside. We've already established that I am in dire need of education vis a vis Charles II but there were no books on the subject in the shop, which I was really disappointed about. If you're thinking "look, Little Miss Whinge, there's this thing called Amazon?" you are absolutely correct and I've gone there and purchased this.

I will now finish with one of those stories where the person telling it thinks they've had a really spooky supernatural experience and everyone listening thinks 'you just saw something on a shelf'. 

Basically, I spent 20 minutes at Moseley sitting in the sun and mentally berating my useless teachers, asking what kind of education system teaches a British kid about Chiang Kai-Shek but doesn't teach them about the time the King of England hid in a cupboard in Wolverhampton. 

Towards the end of the tour (which was really good, by the way, just as everything at Moseley was really good), was a room containing a chest with this on top: 

To you, this may look like an elderly orange with a ribbon and a load of cloves stuck into it, resting on a bed of pot pourri. But to me it was a voice, a voice from beyond the grave, the voice of Mrs House, my 3rd year junior school teacher, saying "What are you complaining about? Did I not teach you to make a pomander EXACTLY like this in 1983? Does your poor mother not still have it, mouldering away in her home somewhere? You were taught loads of history, you just didn't LISTEN." 

And so, thoroughly admonished by an orange, I went home. 

Moseley Old Hall: 5 out of 5
Scones: 4.5 out of 5
Book purchasing opportunities: 3 out of 5 (I bought a guidebook)

Other visits I have made in the West Midlands: Kinver Edge, Wightwick Manor, Dudmaston

Standen

I went to primary school in the 1980s when 'arts and crafts' was a term used to describe 30 kids sticking screwed up bits of tissue onto sugar paper using gloopy white glue that you smeared about the place using little white spatulas.

So I was quite surprised when I discovered that Arts and Crafts actually means something quite different to most other people. I'm not going to embarrass myself by telling you when I made that discovery but it wasn't in the 1980s.

Anyway, Standen in West Sussex is a fine example of a house built in the Arts and Crafts style. It was designed by the architect Philip Webb, who also built Red House.  

Standen was built in 1892-4 for James Beale, a solicitor, and his wife and seven children. In the guidebook there's a lovely photo of the Beale family. Most photos from Victorian/Edwardian times have people stood about like pokers with big glum faces - the Beales actually look like fun people. Or Mafia people. One or the other:

James Beale wanted Standen to be a family home, not a grand country house for entertaining and showing off. But it's an amazing building - it's very homely but it's also quite big. It's also clearly very modern for its time. The Dining Room, for example, has an alcove with dressers in it - it feels practical rather than ostentatious, as you find in so many other properties where rooms used by visitors were designed to impress.

In every room there are fabrics and wallpapers from William Morris, a cohort of Philip Webb and the main driving force behind the Arts and Crafts Movement. Webb was a founder member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., the business set up by Morris and his friends to provide well-crafted furniture and furnishings to the Victorian middle-class.

Webb himself was a fascinating man. He built very few public buildings, preferring to take on commissions for country houses and other properties where he could build a rapport with the owner and create something true to his vision. 

The house was handed over to the National Trust in 1972 by Helen Beale, James's daughter. So what you see is essentially a home built and inhabited by one family.

James Beale's wife, Margaret, was a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell and there's a picture of him in the hall (on some very pretty Arts and Crafts wallpaper).

The Standen Scone
As the self-appointed National Trust Scone Blogger, I'm often asked for the definitive National Trust scone recipe. As far as I know, there isn't one. Every scone I've met so far has been completely unique and each one has its own position on my trusty National Trust Sconeometer™. 

At one end of the National Trust Sconeometer™  are the scones known technically as the "massive hefty ones", a good example being Quarry Bank Mill. 

At the other end of the Sconeometer, we find the light and fluffy species of scone. Until today, Claremont Landscape Garden was the world leader in fluffy National Trust scones. 

But today, Claremont was gently wafted off its perch by a scone that we suspect has more in common genetically with a cloud than with other baked foodstuffs. It was unbelievable. It looked more like a soufflé and it had the texture of one too:

I usually have some sort of heated debate with the scone sidekick about whether a scone is worth top marks or not, but today it was an undisputed FIVE stars.

So that's now FOUR scones in a row winning the Scone D'Or. It's unheard of and it's frankly unnerving. Surely this glorious run of scones can't continue? Stay tuned, sconers - the final nail-biting visit for July takes place on Monday. 

Standen: 5 out of 5
Scone: 5 out of 5
Lack of blobs of tissue stuck on sugar paper cut into the shape of Elizabeth I: 5 out of 5

Charlecote Park

If I had a pound for every time someone recommended Charlecote Park near Stratford-upon-Avon to me, I'd have...why, I'd have £3. But a journalist friend once told me that once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three is a story, so off we went.

I'd been reading a good book about Charlecote: Mistress of Charlecote, The Memoirs of Mary Elizabeth Lucy. On page one, it tells the story of a local tanner's son caught stealing a deer from the park. Sir Thomas Lucy, owner of Charlecote at the time, was a justice of the peace, so the poacher decided it was time to move on and try his luck in the London theatre, his name being William Shakespeare. 

The Shakespeare connection has been very important to Charlecote over the years, although some miserabilist party-poopers have now cast doubt on it. The National Trust took the property on in 1946 partly because of the link (or so I'm told), and since the 1700s the great and the good have come to Charlecote to see where The Bard started a short-lived criminal career.

But Charlecote has a fascinating history with or without Shakespeare:

• The Lucy family has lived on the estate since the 1100s
• The present house was built in the 1550s
• Much of the house was refitted in the 1800s, in Elizabethan Revival style
• The current baronet, Sir Edmund Fairfax-Lucy, still lives in the house
• The father and grandfather of Dame Judi Dench both worked at Charlecote

The Elizabethan Revival style can be seen in the Great Hall, where the supposedly wooden ceiling is actually made of plaster. I've now seen so many Great Halls at National Trust properties that I've decided I want one of my own. I don't know about you, but our hall was the smallest, coldest room in our house - we only ever went in there to open the front door or to collect a semi-frozen coat. Yet in medieval and Tudor times, the Great Hall was the most important room in the house, with people coming and going and servants and dogs running around. If you ever see an episode of Grand Designs with Kevin McCloud saying "what she's planning is quite literally ridiculous - a medieval Great Hall where servants and dogs can run around, even though she hasn't got any servants and she's scared of dogs. I just can't see it working," - you'll know it's me. 

Anyway, back to the book. What makes Mistress of Charlecote so readable is its author, Mary Elizabeth Lucy. She wrote her memoirs specifically for her grandchildren, yet she happily tells them that she was forced to marry their grandad in 1823, even though she cried her eyes out and begged and pleaded with her father not to make her do it. It makes you realise that Jane Austen wasn't inventing it all. 

I also have Jane Austen to thank for my Surprising Moment of Self-Discovery of the Week. We came out of the house and saw a sign for 'Carriages', which made my heart sink, as I have absolutely sub-zero interest in transport history.

But I was shocked to find that I was FASCINATED by the display of carriages. I am almost tempted to give up my job, find a PhD course on How People Got About Before Cars and write books on the subject. For all you other Jane Austen fans, below on the left you can see a barouche, with its four seats, two facing two, as used by those pompous old bats Lady Catherine de Bourgh and the Dowager Viscountess Lady Dalrymple.

On the right is a brougham, which was invented a bit later and is enclosed, making one think mainly of murders on foggy November nights in Whitechapel.

And this is a phaeton or "an owner-driven carriage suitable for a sportsman who enjoyed driving himself with groom sitting behind". So now you know. I'll let you know when my book is published.

The Charlecote Scone
But let me stick to my true area of expertise: scones. In the history of the National Trust Scone Blog, I've never had top-scoring scones on three consecutive missions. Two weeks ago Claremont Landscape Garden was awarded five out of five for their flufftastic scones. A week later, Bateman's took top honours for their any-fresher-and-they-were-flour scones. Surely, the scone blogger wasn't going to score a hat-trick?

Readers, she did score a hat-trick. The scone at Charlecote Park was scone perfection. There was a choice of plain or fruit, a choice of jam, a sprinkle of icing sugar and the freshest scone since...well, last week. It had that tiny hint of warmth that provides the alibi of freshness, without interfering with your digestion. The Orangery was a lovely restaurant as well - welcoming with friendly staff. Marvellous.

Charlecote Park: 5 out of 5

Scone: 5 out of 5

Surprisingly fascinating carriages: 5 out of 5

Bateman's

Here is a list of things that I knew about Rudyard Kipling before I went to Bateman's:
1. He wrote The Jungle Book, but the actual book and not the cartoon

That's it. Worryingly, I knew this when I was about nine years old - I remember finding a copy of The Jungle Book and being really disappointed that it was full of words and no pictures of bears in grass skirts.

But the National Trust has saved the day, yet again, and raised me out of my shameful ignorance. Bateman's in East Sussex was Kipling's home from 1902 until he died in 1936. He loved it and it's easy to see why:

Here's what I learned about Kipling today:

• He was the most famous writer in the English-speaking world in his day
• His most famous works included The Jungle Book, the Just So Stories, Kim, and poems such as If and Gunga Din
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
• He refused a knighthood
• He lost his first child, Josephine, to pneumonia when she was six, and then his son, John, in the Battle of Loos during the First World War
• His remaining daughter Elsie married a Captain Bambridge and lived on the Wimpole Estate from 1938 to 1976, when she handed it over to the National Trust (it's a small world)

Bateman's itself was built around 1634. It is presented today just as 'Rud' left it, but it retains a real sense of its Stuart origins, with huge fireplaces and a Hall for welcoming guests.

In fact, every single room at Bateman's is strikingly pretty. The study feels like he only just left it (although it does appear to have a large run-over cat in it):

And then you leave the house and are faced with the stunning loveliness of the garden and pond, before you look back and marvel at the rear view of the building:

Bateman's is one of those National Trust properties that you know you could live in. I did start to wonder what it would take for the nation to offer me Bateman's. I'd probably have to save the country from an asteroid or a giant tidal wave, or maybe it would be enough to show 11 young men how to win 7 games of football and come home with the World Cup? I mean, how hard can that be?

Anyway, possibly my favourite feature at Bateman's was a radio with a dial that visitors can turn to hear one of Kipling's poems or letters being read by the actor, Ralph Fiennes. It's such a simple idea and yet it made my day - just a few minutes listening to Kipling's work being read aloud in the house that he loved. It was quite mesmerising. 

The Batemans scone
I had had a gentle word with myself before I set off for Bateman's. I reminded me that in National Trust Scone Blog history there has very rarely been a 5 out of 5 in consecutive visits, and Claremont Landscape Garden got a 5 last week. I should probably prepare myself for misery on the M25 followed by potential scone disappointment.

But I was WRONG, readers. The Bateman's scones were absolutely fantastic. They certainly looked the part, there was a choice of plain or fruit AND a choice of jam, and they proved to be extremely fresh, soft, tasty and very crumbly. A triumph. 

So it seems that the only thing I didn't learn today is why the place is called Bateman's. If anyone knows the answer, let me know!

Batemans: 5 out of 5

Scones: 5 out of 5

Ralph Fiennes: 5 out of 5

Claremont Landscape Garden

I'm going to be dangerously honest here: I'm not very interested in gardening. I will change my mind eventually, I'm sure. One day I will get into my car and be really excited at the thought of going somewhere to see some peonies - AND I'll know what peonies are.

The problem with my lack of passion for gardens is that I am unwittingly excluding them from my National Trust Scone Odyssey. And then one freezing cold day in December none of the manor houses or castles will be open and I'll head off to a garden only to complain that THERE'S NOTHING THERE! GARDENS ARE BORING! Which would be very unfair indeed. 

So I decided to preempt this injustice and go to Claremont Landscape Garden in the summertime. 

The first thing I learned at Claremont today is that I don't actually know what a landscape garden is. I was expecting rigorously ordered flower beds, with blue ones lined up against yellow ones (I told you I know nothing about gardening). I think I was maybe getting confused with Langley roundabout near Slough, where someone has spelled out HONDA using red flowers (nope, no idea what they are either).

This is Claremont Landscape Garden:

  
It's more of a park, and a very good park too, for the following three reasons:

• It's a good size - if you want to visit every nook and cranny of it, you could do so in one visit
• It's full of features - there's a thatched cottage, a tower, statues...all sorts of things to see
• It's a park for all seasons - because it's not reliant on flowers, you could happily visit Claremont all year round

Claremont also has an interesting history. The Duke of Newcastle bought it from Sir John Vanburgh, keeping Sir John on to expand the house and landscape the gardens. He built a thatched cottage a bit like this one for gambling:

And he built the Belvedere Tower for supper parties and card-playing:

Robert, Lord Clive of India, bought the house from the Duke and knocked it down to build a new one, but he died before he moved in. Between 1816 and 1922, Claremont was a home to British and foreign royalty, including the young Queen Victoria who visited her Uncle Leopold there and had such happy memories of the place that she brought her own children back to the estate.

Today, the house is a school and is not open to visitors - you could send your child there, though, if you're happy to part with £15,000 a year.  

The Claremont scone
The fourth and fifth reasons for why you must visit Claremont are a) the tea room and b) the scones. The tea room is lovely and relaxed - there's enough room for everyone. And the scones were a triumph. I've had a couple of visits lately where the scones have been a bit on the small side (namely Cliveden and Killerton). I know we live in times of austerity (or is that all finished now?) but I was starting to get a bit concerned that the National Trust was rationing flour.

Claremont delivered a bumper crop of scones. A cream tea cost £5.25, so probably one of the most expensive that we've encountered, but it came with the usual delicious National Trust tea and two beautiful-to-behold scones. And my word, were they good scones. They were without doubt the lightest, fluffiest scones yet seen on the National Trust Scone Odyssey:

So I think that the moral of this story is never judge a National Trust property by its name. Or think you know what a landscape garden is. 

Claremont Landscape Gardens: 5 out of 5
Scones: 5 out of 5 
Thatched cottage built for gambling, now full of toddlers: 3 out of 5