Treasurer's House, York

I get a mixed reaction when I first tell people about this National Trust Scone Blog. It varies from "that's...interesting" to "you are completely bats - why can't I have a normal sister". 

But today I admit that I pushed the boundaries of sanity by going all the way to Treasurer's House in York for a scone. 

It wasn't just any old scone though. It was a CHRISTMAS PUDDING SCONE. I know. And I will freely and willingly admit to you that I cheated on this mission by hinting to them that I was coming because, frankly, if I had got all the way to York only to discover that they had decided not to bother making any that day I would have thrown myself onto the floor in a monstrous tantrum, which is not a good look for anyone, least of all a 40 year-old woman. 

But first things first: the house. The National Trust has two Treasurer's Houses, the other being in Somerset. Treasurer's House in York is a bit of a challenge: 

1. It was never actually the house of a treasurer. It was constructed in Elizabethan times on the site of a medieval mansion inhabited by the treasurer of York Minster. After the Reformation, it was announced that "the treasure having being confiscated there is no further need of a Treasurer" which is a fairly succinct way of telling someone they're fired. The medieval mansion was then passed to various archbishops. 

2. Thomas Young, archbishop of York from 1562 to 1568, started work on the present house. It was chopped and changed and extended by other Youngs before being sold to Thomas Fairfax, the Parliamentarian leader. And so it went on, from owner to owner and extension after extension, until it was divided into five properties. 

3. A man called Frank Green started acquiring the properties in 1897. He stamped his own mark on Treasurer's House - for example, he knocked many rooms and an attic together to create a medieval great hall that he insisted had once been part of the house, even though the building is no more medieval than I am. The Greens, who had made their money from a device used in steam-powered mills, liked hob-nobbing with royalty and after Queen Alexandra and Princess Victoria stayed in the house, Frank redecorated their rooms state bedroom-style and would show them off to visitors, even though the rooms had looked totally different when the royal guests actually slept in them. 

The house was in semi-hibernation today, as the doors close for winter on Sunday. This meant that visitors had to join a tour if they wanted to see the house and Bob who led us around was great. 

What I loved about Treasurer's House and Bob's tour was that I learned as much about the life of an early twentieth century business owner as I learned about the house. And that's very clever, because without the Frank Green story then Treasurer's House would be a hodge-podge of decorative and architectural styles, with a rather mis-matched collection of artefacts.

Side entrance to Treasurer's House right by York Minster

The Treasurer's House scone
But let us move on to the scones. I admit that I am a glass half empty kind of a girl and I was expecting something to go badly wrong on this scone mission, as so much was riding on it. Would the house be closed because of drizzle? Had I misread things and they were actually making black pudding scones? 

But the tearoom was cosy (don't get me started about the lovely toilets) and there on a blackboard were the words CHRISTMAS PUDDING SCONE WITH BRANDY BUTTER.

I had to risk looking like a greedy pig and order a plain scone cream tea AND a pudding scone, as this is a highly scientific study and some control has to be maintained. But I only had eyes for the Christmas pud scone when they arrived. The aroma was out of this world, which is why my photos are so rubbish, as I just wanted to start stuffing my face as soon as humanly possible. 

So let's just recap: I have travelled 200 miles for a scone. That scone looks amazing and smells amazing. Surely it can't be as nice as I am anticipating? 

Readers, it was off the scale delicious. That first bite of Christmas pudding scone with brandy butter will remain with me for a very long time. As I left I saw a man eating some sort of ordinary cake and I wanted to shout "THEY HAVE CHRISTMAS PUDDING SCONES, MAN! GET A RUDDY GRIP!"

I ate every last bit of my pudding scone, and it was a hefty fellow. I then turned my by now slightly less enthusiastic attention to the plain scone. It was delicious. It was fresh and light and fluffy and I loved it enough to eat half of it before I started to look like a gerbil and had to stop. 

Was it worth the trip? 100% yes. When I get planning permission to construct a National Trust Scone Walk of Fame in my back garden, Treasurers House will be right there with Flatford and Dunwich Heath in the pantheon of scones. 

The tea room remains open throughout December I think, so if you have any way of getting to York, GO. It's right next to the Minster so you can have a little look in there and you can check out the Christmas fair as well. Win win win. 

Treasurer's House: 5 out of 5
Scones: 5 out of 5
Christmas pudding scones: 5+ out of 5

NEW! You can listen to the podcast that I recorded at Treasurers House in York when I returned to the property in 2019!

Bath Assembly Rooms Revisited

Cue very deep American TV announcer voice: Last time. At Bath Assembly Rooms. 

• Cut to image of girl getting off train in Bath and skipping down the street
• Cut to image of CLOSED sign on door of Bath Assembly Rooms
• Cut to image of woman at counter shaking head at girl asking for a scone
• Cut to image of girl trudging back to train
• Cut to image of sign saying TRAIN DELAYED FOR TWO HOURS, WHICH WILL SEEM LIKE TWO DAYS AS IT IS VERY COLD INDEED
• Cut to image of girl weeping on shoulder of harassed train guard

Yes, this pretty much describes my previous visit to Bath Assembly Rooms. It wasn't what you would call a major success -  read the full tale of Bath Assembly Rooms woe.

But I decided that it was time to go back and give it another try, which is how we found ourselves back at Bath Assembly Rooms again today:

And I'm very glad that we did, because today we struck baked foodstuff gold. Yes indeed, today the cafe at Bath Assembly Rooms had cheese scones and sweet scones galore. The sweet scone was lovely - not fresh but very, very tasty indeed and fine-looking to boot:

I had a slight moment of panic when the scone sidekick announced that he wasn't hungry enough for a scone and he'd have a bit of mine, which obviously wasn't alright at all. So I bought a Bath Bun as well, thinking I could maybe fend him off with that. We ended up sharing all of it, but the Bath Bun was a REVELATION. It was fresh as a daisy and very tasty indeed, so hurrah for the Bath Bun.

A Bath Bun

The second bit of success was that all of the Assembly Rooms were open - last year many of the rooms were closed for a function, which is fair enough really considering that the Assembly Rooms were built for functions in the first place. 

This year we had the run of the place - here's a rare sighting of the scone sidekick busting some Len Goodman-esque moves in the Tearoom (or at least I think that's what he's doing - maybe he was just telling me it was time to leave):

And here's the Ballroom, all set up for another recital of some sort:

These Assembly Rooms were built in 1769. The old Assembly Rooms were too small to accommodate the hordes that started descending on Bath during its Georgian heyday, as documented by Jane Austen. So John Wood the Elder and his son, helpfully known as John Wood the Younger, designed and built the Upper Assembly Rooms that are now in the care of the National Trust. But I went into great detail about all of this in my previous post so I won't repeat it all here.

Instead I shall end by raving about the city of Bath itself. It really is a fantastic place. You can visit the amazing Roman Baths, which should be on anyone's bucket list, and the Pump Room, which you can see below on the right, next door to Bath Abbey where a nice busker was doing a very passable version of Jolene.

If you're reading this thinking 'actually, I prefer it when things go completely wrong for her', then you're in luck - today I also tried to visit Bath Skyline, which is a set of footpaths that provide stunning views over the city. It didn't go according to plan - read about Bath Skyline.


Bath Assembly Rooms: 5 out of 5
Scone: 4.5 out of 5
Bath Bun: 5 out of 5

Other National Trust scones in Somerset: Barrington Court, Bath Skyline, Brean Down, Coleridge Cottage, Dunster Castle, Fyne Court, Holnicote, Lytes Cary, Montacute, Prior Park, Tyntesfield

Bath Skyline

SPOILER ALERT: there are no scones on Bath Skyline. This is because Bath Skyline is a 6 mile walk along some footpaths, with stunning views of Bath along the way. If you want to eat scones in a National Trust property in Bath, you need to go to Bath Assembly Rooms, where I also went today.

HOWEVER. I cannot be 100% certain that there are no scones on Bath Skyline. I cannot be 100% certain that there are 6 miles of footpath, nor that there are stunning views of Bath along the way. For all I know, there could be a Madame Sconeington-Sconesbury's Superstore of Scones on the Bath Skyline. I don't know because I couldn't actually FIND Bath Skyline.

I'm not blaming anyone but myself and the scone sidekick for this. The woman in the tourist office gave us a map and warned us that the bit of Bath Skyline nearest the town isn't very well signposted. I am absolutely hopeless with a map anyway. And we were short of time - today we walked along, argued twice about where we were, and then gave up. Usually we make this last at least an hour.

So here's a picture I borrowed from the National Trust website, showing a view from Bath Skyline. I think you will agree that it's lovely. One day, I will return and I WILL FIND IT.

Bath Skyline: 0 out of 5, as I couldn't find it (due to my own shortcomings, I add)
Scones: 0 out of 5, as there weren't any

Sheffield Park and Garden

I sometimes get the urge to ring Leeds Castle and say "What are you doing calling yourself Leeds Castle when you are in Kent? You could cause someone a serious travel mishap." (Note to the people that work at Leeds Castle: I have never actually done this, so if anonymous callers complaining about the above are the bane of your life, it's not me.)

Likewise Sheffield Park and Garden, which is actually in East Sussex and not in Yorkshire. I was hoping it might be a mini enclave of its Northern namesake, with Geoffrey Boycott in a flat cap saying "ow do" as he directed us to a parking space. But it wasn't and he didn't.

Sheffield Park is in the Domesday Book - it meant 'sheep clearing', apparently. A lot of illustrious personages were connected with Sheffield Park but it was in 1730 that we know Lord de le Warr began landscaping the gardens. 

John Baker Holroyd, the Earl of Sheffield, bought the estate in 1769. He employed Capability Brown to continue the landscaping, and the work was continued by Humphrey Repton. 

(On a side note, the makers of Doctor Who really should have a look at Capability Brown. The man seemed to have had a hand in every garden in England in the 18th century. Either he was a timelord, he had cloned himself and there were ten of him, or he was part-octopus.)

Henry Holroyd, the 3rd Earl, was mad about cricket and built a cricket pitch at Sheffield Park. He died heavily in debt and the estate was acquired by Arthur Gilstrap Soames. He carried on the landscaping effort, putting in a lot of the plants that are still there today: the rhododendrons, the American oaks, and the Japanese maples. His nephew inherited and sold the estate in lots. The National Trust acquired the gardens in 1954.

(On another side note, the National Trust guidebook really didn't seem to want to talk about the house. It's in private ownership so maybe something dodgy is going on in there - perhaps it's the headquarters of the pro-fracking coalition or the National Old Building Eradication and Removal Society?)

The marketing campaign to promote autumn as the best time to visit Sheffield Park and Garden has been a huge success - the place was absolutely packed. And it was well worth the visit - there are plenty of paths for walking and admiring the autumnal views.

I also found what I firmly believe to be Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree. The label said Sequoiadendron giganteum but I know The Faraway Tree when I see it:

The Sheffield Park Scone
Anyway, let's move onto the scones. Sheffield Park definitely wins the award for National Trust Property That Doesn't Skimp On The Scones Like Cliveden Does: a cream tea comprised of two hefty fellas that weren't fresh but by Jiminy they looked the part and they were enormous. I managed one and a half before I had to reluctantly admit defeat.

I'm going to finish with an apology on behalf of the Scone Sidekick to the wood artist that carved these charming sheep that can be found dotted around the estate. The Sidekick, on seeing them, said "oh look, it's a hippopotamus":

Sheffield Park & Garden: 4 out of 5
Scones: 4 out of 5
Trees resembling Enid Blyton characters: 5 out of 5

Ickworth

I'm going to admit something bad: I sometimes visit National Trust properties just because I like their names.

Even worse, I have been known to overlook properties because I DON'T like their names. I know. Feel free to stop reading.

Anyway, I'm ashamed to say that I overlooked Ickworth for quite a while. And then I was looking for somewhere to go in Suffolk, on the basis that my most successful scone missions to date have been at Flatford and Dunwich Heath and therefore Suffolk must be the Mecca of scones, and up popped Ickworth. I started reading about it and within five minutes I was shouting "HOLY MOLY! Start the Sconemobile!"

I don't even know where to start with the factoids. OK, as we're being open about my shallowness, let's begin with the dirt:

1. Bess Foster lived there
Elizabeth Hervey Foster Cavendish is probably best known for being part of the scandalous menage-a-trois that she formed with the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire (as played by Keira Knightley in the film The Duchess). Bess was the daughter of the Earl-Bishop who built the house at Ickworth and she lived there with her first husband before allegedly having an affair with a servant and ending up divorced and disgraced and in Bath where she made things even worse after befriending Georgiana. Luckily for her, Georgiana died and Bess married the Duke. There's a portrait of Bess in the Drawing Room:

2. Ickworth has been inhabited by scandalous Herveys for 600 years 
Bess wasn't the only Hervey with a "colourful private life", as the guidebook puts it. The Herveys (pronounced Harvey) took ownership of Ickworth in the mid 15th century, through marriage. They were very influential at court down the years, but they were also total scandal magnets. Mary Wortley Montagu is famously quoted as saying that there were three human species: "Men, Women, and Herveys". 

3. Ickworth House was built by an Earl who was also a bishop
The Earl-Bishop, as he was known, was the younger grandson of the 1st Earl of Bristol. He didn't expect to inherit so he wangled himself a bishopric in Derry. He doesn't sound terribly well suited to ecclesiastical life, to be honest - he preferred careering round Europe collecting works of art to doing sermons. Factoid of the Day: he is the reason that you will often find a Hotel Bristol in so many towns on the Continent, as our good friend was frequently seen in those parts, bouncing along in his carriage looking for art, like some sort of 18th century Charles Saatchi. He became the 4th Earl and built Ickworth as we see it today - he loved round buildings and had already built himself a fine one in Ballyscullion, which he then used as a basis for Ickworth.

4. The 7th Marquess didn't like the National Trust and flew his helicopter at them
My taxi driver told me about the man who lived at Ickworth: "He did loads of drugs and threw wild parties and wasted all his millions. A friend of mine once had to pick him up when his helicopter ran out of fuel." I thought to myself: 'I bet they don't tell you THAT in the National Trust guidebook' but I was WRONG because they DO. After the 4th Marquess of Bristol restored Ickworth (thanks to his marriage with a wealthy heiress called Theodora) it all went downhill and the National Trust spares no detail in the guidebook - the 6th Marquess, Victor Hervey, was a playboy in the 1960s who ended up in prison for taking part in an armed robbery. Ickworth was owned by the National Trust by the time Victor moved in, with an agreement that the Herveys could continue to reside there. His son, who became the 7th Marquess in 1985, also did time, for possession of drugs. He loved Ickworth and resented the National Trust's presence, so would hover his helicopter over the upper storey of the Rotunda where the NT custodian lived. He ended up having to sell loads of family stuff to the Trust when his millons ran out and he died when he was just 44. 

So there you have it. And I haven't even mentioned the 3rd Earl, who secretly married an Elizabeth Chudleigh who then went on to enjoy a bigamous marriage with the Duke of Kingston, which caused - guess what - an almighty scandal. Say what you like, you certainly got your money's worth with the Herveys. 

The problem with all of this is that I haven't even mentioned Ickworth itself. It is STUPENDOUS. The house is formed of a Rotunda with two enormous wings curving round either side. It looks more like an art gallery and that's exactly what the Earl-Bishop intended - he wanted it to be a showcase for his art collection, which unfortunately was confiscated by Napoleon before he could get it back to England. 

The whole place is extremely impressive, with huge rooms. I can't recommend it highly enough. The East Wing is now The Ickworth Hotel and I will definitely be checking THAT out at some point (pointed look at Scone Sidekick). 

Ickworth undoubtedly wins the award for nicest house volunteers. I've mentioned before that going to properties on your own can sometimes be a bit of an uncomfortable experience (the Scone Sidekick didn't have the day off like me) but at Ickworth it was the total opposite - I had more time to chat and the guides were absolutely lovely, every one of them. 

The Ickworth scone
And what about the scones? Ickworth has a lovely swanky restaurant, complete with table service. I did have to wait quite a long time to actually get served, but never mind - I am not going to turn into one of those Tripadvisor reviewers that gives a place a TERRIBLE rating "because it was raining". I got served in the end and that's the main thing.

The scone itself was fresher than a daisy with a new chat-up line - the texture was perfect in every way. I'd had a choice of plain or fruit and there was plentiful fruit in mine. It was a great scone, so bravo to the Ickworth scone maker.

My trip to Ickworth was the 59th stop on my National Trust Scone Odyssey and it was a watershed moment, because I have now visited every National Trust property that begins with an i. To be fair there are only two of them - Ightham Mote is the other - but it's still an achievement. I'll just have to hope that the Trust doesn't buy Iceland or an igloo before the Scone Odyssey is complete (and you never know with the National Trust). 

Ickworth: 5 out of 5, no question
Scones: 4.5 out of 5
Loveliness of the volunteers in the house: 5 out of 5

Clandon Park

Did you know that there's a Maori meeting house in Guildford? It doesn't seem like the most obvious place to put a Maori meeting house, I have to say, but it's there in the grounds of Clandon Park. 

Maoris were the subject of a TV series that I loved as a child in the 1980s called Children of Fire Mountain. It was slightly misleading, in that it convinced me that all children in New Zealand lived on the edge of an exploding volcano and dressed like mini-Edwardians. Imagine my surprise when I met my first Kiwi and she wasn't covered in soot.

Anyway, the Maori meeting house is called Hinemihi. It originally stood in the shadow of the Mount Tarawera volcano near Rotorua on North Island. It was built in 1881 to act as a traditional meeting place for the Maori community, but also to welcome tourists that were attracted by the thermal spas in the area. In 1886, Tarawera erupted and Hinemihi was one of only two buildings in the town that survived. (Funnily enough, the storyline of COFM involved a tourist spa being built on Maori land before a volcano destroys it all.)

Hinemihi was brought to Clandon in 1892. The 4th Lord Onslow was Governor of New Zealand and wanted to bring a meeting house back home to the UK when his term in office ended. It has remained here ever since, with some new carvings being added in 1995 - the carvings were done by descendants of the original builders, using trees from Tarawera, and were presented to the National Trust for its centenary.

Clandon House itself looks a bit like a doll's house:

It was built during the 1720s by Thomas, 2nd Lord Onslow, with the help of architect Giacomo Leoni, who was a big fan of the Palladian style. 

The Onslows are one of those families that you could write a mini-series about - they had been involved in court business and politics for centuries. Clandon House was built to mark their growing influence and importance, and it acted as a place for entertaining and general showing off. The Onslows still live at Clandon, in a house in the park.

During the First World War, Clandon was used as a military hospital. One of the rooms was used as an operating theatre and it has been restored to give you an idea of what it was like. The thought of the pain caused during the 700+ operations carried out in there made me shudder but it's a good idea.

Clandon Park scones
There's a very nice tea-room with friendly staff at Clandon. The scones were dinky little things, with a choice of plain or fruit. I don't think they were fresh but they were very tasty indeed:

Clandon Park: 4 out of 5

Scones: 4.5 out of 5

Maori meeting house: 5 out of 5

Lacock Abbey

I'm a bit like Shania Twain when it comes to National Trust properties that have appeared on TV or in films - they don't impress me much. However, I'm going to make an exception with Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire.

Lacock Abbey stood in for Hogwarts in many of the Harry Potter films. The cloisters below, for example, were used in numerous scenes, and the Sacristy was Professor Snape's laboratory. 

Lacock is a fantastic place, whether it has Harry Potter connections or not. The abbey was built in the 1200s by Ela, Countess of Salisbury. She sounds quite formidable: she was the only child of the Earl of Salisbury and became a ward of King Richard I when her father died. She married William Longespee and when he died she built Lacock Abbey, where she lived as its first abbess until she died in 1261. Her tomb can be seen in the cloisters.

Lacock survived as an abbey until 1539, when it was closed during the final wave of Henry VIII's Dissolution. It was bought by William Sharington, who turned the abbey into a country house. Lacock was relatively small, so Sharington built on top of it rather than knocking it down. 

And that's what makes Lacock Abbey quite fascinating - it's a house on top of an abbey and you can see the joins all over the place, as in the South Gallery:

Lacock ended up being passed to Sharington's niece, Olive, who had married a John Talbot. The house then remained in the Talbot family until it was passed to the National Trust in 1944.

The most famous Talbot inhabitant of Lacock was the snappily named William Henry Fox Talbot, who changed the world when he invented the photographic negative.

I love the story behind WHFT's invention, even though it makes me feel completely inadequate. Basically, he was on honeymoon on Lake Como and feeling annoyed by his inability to draw or paint the beautiful scenes he was seeing. "There must be a way of committing these images to paper," he thought, and so went home to Lacock and invented a way. I've said it before; if the world had relied on me to invent things, we'd still be sitting in caves in the dark. It would never even occur to me to try and create such a thing.

Anyway, there's a museum that explains WHFT's work and his rivalry with Louis Daguerre. I am still absolutely none the wiser as to how photography actually works, but that's not the museum's fault at all. I could have stayed in there for the next 20 years, with WHFT himself taking me through it, and I would still be clueless.

Lacock also has a Great Hall, which gets another big tick from me, as I do love a Great Hall:

There's more. Lacock village itself is also a star of TV and film - Cranford was filmed there, Pride & Prejudice, Moll Flanders, Emma, Tess of the d'Urbervilles...you name it and Lacock's 18th century houses have been in it. The village is also owned by the National Trust.

But now it's time to move onto the scones. I spent far too much of my time this week on a side project called Scone Forensics. I invented SF to help me work out the age of a scone - I wanted to be a bit more informed on my scone visits, so instead of me saying 'It was a bit dry' I wanted to be able to say 'This scone was 3.48 days old! Give it a bus pass!'.

Using Scone Forensics for the first time (eek), I would say that the Lacock scone was at least a day old and had been kept in an airtight tin. It looked and tasted quite dry, and it had that soft, slightly damp texture that you get from keeping a scone in airtight conditions. I'm not sure why people do it, to be honest. 

I was too scared to go and ask the staff behind the counter if I was right. I once had to take a scone back because it was the wrong flavour and the girl serving seemed so traumatised that I felt guilty for days afterwards.

HOWEVER. Lacock scores very highly for its generous cream portion and for the size of its scone - I reckon you could fit two Cliveden scones into one Lacock scone. It also tasted really nice, despite being a bit dry - it was buttery and very tasty. AND there was a choice of plain or fruit, which is always a treat. 

On the subject of Cliveden, a correspondent went there recently and tells me that the scones are still very small and don't taste very nice. I'll be honest: this depresses me. I'm not claiming to be some sort of Gordon Ramsey of scones but if someone told me, in a polite and constructive way, that I was selling something that wasn't great value for money, I would change it.

But never mind that: Lacock is fantastic and I highly recommend it.

Lacock: 5 out of 5
Scones: 3.5 out of 5
Sightings of Hedwig the owl: 0 out of 5