Castle Ward

I never expected the National Trust to be a source of marital advice, but today I learned a useful, if possibly expensive, way to assure harmony with your spouse.

Bernard Ward, 1st Viscount Bangor, built Castle Ward in County Down in the 1760s. He was a big fan of the Classical style, but his wife Ann wanted a Gothic look. So they built a house with two facades. The north side is Gothic:

while the front is designed in a Classical style:

You'll notice that I put my drowned rat of a sister into each picture to prove that these are indeed two sides of the same house.

Sadly, it seems like the compromise on the house build didn't do much for Bernie and Ann's marriage: once the house was finished, she left him and headed to Bath. 

I learned all of this from Dorothy, the very excellent tour guide, who also revealed that Bernard and Ann had actually hated each other on sight. They had to be cajoled into marriage on account of him having the estate and her having the money.

They were so opposed in their tastes that the entire house at Castle Ward is split down the middle - his side is all classical ceilings and door-frames:

While her side is all Gothic ceilings and finishings:

They had eight children though, so presumably they did meet up occasionally.

And if that isn't enough to send you running for the next flight to Belfast, then let me share some other fascinating factoids:

1. Old Castle Ward is still there
The original house is actually a tower, built in 1590 to provide protection during troubled times. It was cramped but the Ward family was only relatively prosperous at the time.

2. The Boudoir has to be seen to be believed
Judge Michael Ward (1683-1749) built the family fortune on linen and other business interests. It was he who encouraged his son Bernard to marry Ann and it is she who is responsible for one of the most jaw-dropping rooms I have ever seen at the NT:

John Betjeman apparently said that being in the Boudoir was like living under the udders of a giant cow. I think we can see what he meant.

3. Attempted fratricide at Castle Ward!
Bernard and Ann had three sons. The eldest, Nicholas, was eventually certified insane. His brother Edward apparently looked after him, but when Edward died in 1812 the other brother, Robert, tried to kill Nicholas. It sounds like he chose his methods from the Laurel and Hardy book of murder techniques - he tried loosening the stair bannisters so Nicholas would fall through them, which failed, as well as removing a cover from a coal chute so he'd fall down it. Robert was an all-round rotter, as he also plundered the house of its valuable contents, carting them all off to his own home.

4. A mystery about a missing village!
The guide book explains how the widow of the 3rd Viscount may have paid for an entire village to board a ship and start a new life in America, allowing her to knock down their houses and take possession of the land. Nobody knows if it is true but the village of Audleystown did disappear completely.

5. Mary Ward - the first person killed in an automobile accident
The wife of the 5th Viscount was a very intelligent woman - she was hugely respected in scientific circles for her use of the microscope. However, she is probably most famous for being killed by a steam engine built by her cousin - she fell under its wheels and was crushed in 1869.

6. Castle Ward = Winterfell 
I haven't watched one single minute of Game of Thrones, so this was all a bit lost on me, but the farmyard at Castle Ward was used as the location for Winterfell! 

7. Boxing squirrels
Now. You know on TV when they say "this next report contains scenes that some viewers may find upsetting"? Well, this part of my post comes with a warning that you might find the next picture a little...odd. 

It is without the doubt the maddest thing I have ever seen at the National Trust (and there's some competition for that, let's face it):

It's basically five glass cases depicting the stages of a boxing match between two red squirrels. Yes, for 150 years these ten squirrels have been frozen in a tableau where they're either shaking hands or being punched in the face by another squirrel. 

I borrowed this close-up from Castle Ward's Facebook page as I wanted to show you the detail involved - it's unbelievable. They were created by a taxidermist called Edward Hart - he made several copies and one of them recently sold for $70,000.

I had to be physically dragged from the room - I could have stood there all day boggling at the expressions on their little faces.

The Castle Ward scone
But into the scone. The Castle Ward tea-room is one of the nicest that I've encountered - the seats were really comfortable and we were very happy to sit in there out of the rain drinking our tea. The scone itself was very tasty - maybe just a little bit on the dry side but definitely fresh. 

Castle Ward is one of those NT properties that you just have to visit - amazing architecture, fantastic history, and a bit of Game of Thrones thrown in if you're that way inclined. 

Castle Ward: 5 out of 5
Scone: 4 out of 5
Boxing squirrels: 100 out of 5

In 2019, I went back to Northern Ireland to complete my rounds. Read more about Carrick-a-Rede, Crom, Castle Coole, Cushendun, Divis and the Black Mountain, White Park Bay, Springhill. 

Mount Stewart

I met my match at Mount Stewart in County Down. I don't mean that I found a giant scone that I couldn't eat, or that I was confronted by a posse of angry catering staff wanting vengeance for all the 0/5 marks that I've given out over the years.

I'm talking about my reading. I love it when I find a really good book about an NT property and I was over the moon to find one about Robert Stewart, aka Castlereagh, in the shop at Mount Stewart - I knew he was an interesting character. But in my excitement I failed to notice quite how weighty it was. 

Here it is, with the NT handbook (and my cat's tail) for perspective: 

Let's face it, scone fans; I was never going to read all of that on an Easyjet flight from Belfast to Luton. But let me share what I've learned so far:

1. Mount Stewart - the history

• A man called Alexander Stewart, born in Donegal but descended from Scottish Presbyterians, married a wealthy woman called Mary Cowan in 1737 and they acquired an estate on the shore of Strangford Lough in County Down
• It was originally known as Mount Pleasant, but became Mount Stewart
• Their son, Robert, became an MP in the Irish Parliament in 1771, and although the house at Mount Stewart remained relatively simple, additional pieces were added - an ornamental building called the Temple of the Winds, lodges and driveways
• Robert's second wife was the daughter of the Earl of Camden, a mighty bigwig. This might explain how Robert was made Baron Londonderry in 1789, Viscount Castlereagh in 1795, and then Earl of Londonderry in 1796.
• His eldest son by his first wife, also Robert, styled himself Viscount Castlereagh - he's the 'interesting' Castlereagh that we're going to come to in a minute
• Work was carried out on the property to extend it over the years - after Castlereagh killed himself, his half-brother Charles made a very wealthy marriage of his own and building work took off in earnest
• Mount Stewart was a bit neglected by the fourth and fifth marquesses (Charles' sons) but the seventh marquess transformed Mount Stewart with the help of his wife, Edith - the house is presented today as they had it
• Charles and Edith left the house to their youngest daughter, Mairi, who died in 2009. Her daughter, Rose, still lives there today.
• Interesting-factoid-probably-only-interesting-to-me-and-anyone-else-in-West-London: The title of Marquess of Londonderry passed to Mairi's brother, Robin. He had three children, one of whom went on to become Annabel Goldsmith, mother of Zach Goldsmith, current MP for Richmond.

2. Mount Stewart - the house

We got there early so we joined the guided tour, which was really good. A restoration project has been going on for five years and the guide pointed some highlights:

In the Central Hall, black and white linoleum tiles that had been put down in the 1960s were removed to reveal the original 1840s floor: 

On the stairs is a picture of Hambletonian, a racehorse owned by the grandfather of the fifth Marquess of Londonderry. Hambletonian took part in a two horse 'race off' in 1799 and won - this portrait shows him being rubbed down afterwards.

George Stubbs, the painter, was apparently unimpressed by how badly the horse had been treated during the race and as a result the picture has some imperfections; the horse is standing on its two left legs, for example, and the stable lad would have to have been Mr Tickle to have an arm long enough to reach the horse's back like that:

Below is the study of the seventh Marquess, who was Minister for Education in the Northern Ireland government from 1921. The guide told us how his plan for education laid out two requisites for the education of children: Catholics and Protestants should be educated together, and religion should not be included on the curriculum. His ideas were not popular and children still attend church-run schools today.

3. Castlereagh - great statesman or despicable murderer?
But let's move on to the most famous owner of Mount Stewart. There's a poem by Shelley, written in 1819 after the Peterloo massacre, and our friend Castlereagh gets a couple of verses:

I met Murder on the way -

He had a mask like Castlereagh -

Very smooth he looked, yet grim;

Seven blood-hounds followed him:

All were fat; and well they might

Be in admirable plight,

For one by one, and two by two,

He tossed the human hearts to chew

Which from his wide cloak he drew.

I can tell you now; it doesn't matter what you read about Castlereagh - nearly 200 years after he killed himself, these verses from The Masque of Anarchy will be there, giving you a fairly graphic idea of why he's none too popular in certain circles.

However, the one place you won't hear about the poem is on the guided tour at Mount Stewart - he is just referred to as "one of the greatest foreign secretaries".

So what was so bad about him? Here's some background:

• Castlereagh was born in Dublin into a Presbyterian family that was part of the English landed gentry
• He was considered to be a brilliant young man - his father almost bankrupted himself getting his son elected as an MP in the Dublin Parliament
• However, while some of Castlereagh's contemporaries allied themselves with the Irish Catholic populace and fought for an independent Ireland, Castlereagh went the other way and fought for an even closer union with Westminster
• He is therefore reviled in Ireland for a) his response to the Irish Rebellion in 1798 when he was Chief Secretary of Ireland and b) bringing in the Acts of Union in 1800, which saw the abolition of the Irish Parliament
• He moved to London where he held many prominent positions in government, including Secretary of State for War (1807-1809) and Foreign Secretary (1812-1822)
• His reputation as a great statesman comes largely from his contribution as the main British representative at the Congress of Vienna, which put a peace plan in place for Europe following Napoleon's defeat in 1814
• He wasn't the only one criticised for the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, when the cavalry charged into a gathering of 60,000-80,000 people in Manchester who were protesting for voting reform, killing 15 people and injuring 400-700 - the outcry was against the whole government and all of the MPs that supported the Six Acts, which banned further gatherings. 
• In 1821, his father died and he became Marquess of Londonderry
• However, by 1822 it was clear that he wasn't well - his family and even the King had noticed that he seemed to be suffering from paranoia or some sort of breakdown
• On 12 August 1822 he cut his own throat and died - an inquest recorded that he was insane, allowing him to be buried in Westminster Abbey

A portrait of Castlereagh

4. Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry

Castlereagh isn't the only well-known inhabitant of Mount Stewart. I also picked up a book about Edith Londonderry, the wife of the seventh Marquess. It's an interesting read - for 50 years, from her marriage in 1899, she was hob-nobbing with the great and the not-so-great in society (they met Hitler and various other Nazi bigwigs, which damaged their reputation) and the book details all of it. She was responsible for creating the gardens that we see today at Mount Stewart.

5. The Mount Stewart Scone

You're probably dying for a cup of tea and a scone after all that history (I know I was). And we weren't disappointed - the scone was really fresh and tasty. Top marks to Mount Stewart.          

So there you have it. It's probably just as well that I haven't read the Castlereagh book yet, otherwise this post would be twice as long. 

Mount Stewart: 5 out of 5
Scone: 5 out of 5
Chances of me having finished my Castlereagh book by Christmas: 1 out of 5

In 2019, I went back to Northern Ireland to complete my rounds. Read more about Carrick-a-Rede, Crom, Castle Coole, Cushendun, Divis and the Black Mountain, White Park Bay, Springhill. 

Best National Trust Scones 2013-2017

It has been FOUR YEARS since I started this blog. Four years since I woke up one morning and thought "I need to get my act together with this National Trust membership. I joined six months ago and I haven't even managed to visit the huge stately home situated 1.5 miles from my living room. And when I do visit, I'm not learning much because I walk around thinking about cake and not really looking at anything." 

In a flash, it came to me - I always remember stuff when I write it down so I'll start a blog. And lo! The National Trust Scone Blog was born. 

 In the past four years the Scone Sidekick and I have:

• Visited 159 NT properties!
• Awarded 58 of them 5 out of 5 and a coveted Scone d'Or!

Scone Boffin Corner: Interestingly, our hit rate has gone up in the last 12 months. We've visited 23 properties and 11 of them served 5-star scones. Even with my worse-than-Diane-Abbott-maths, I can tell that's pretty good, and with my trusty calculator I can tell you it's actually a 48% hit rate against a lifetime 37%! Fascinating.

And so here is the National Trust Scone Blog Birthday Honours List - the 58 properties with 5-star scones, in reverse order of when I visited:

• Peckover House & Garden - you can 'bank' on good scones at Peckover! It used to be a bank! See what I did there? Never mind.
• Clumber Park - the house was demolished many years ago, but Clumber offers beautiful gardens, a beautiful lake, and beautiful scones!
• The Needles Old Battery - it was originally known for being a row of chalk rocks, then for being piled up with guns for defence purposes, then as a secret missile testing site. And now - outstanding scones!
• Wicken Fen - home to 9,000 species of wildlife, flora, fauna and a first class species of scone! Bravo.
• Berrington Hall - even Capability Brown couldn't improve the scones at Berrington Hall - they were berri-good!
• Tyntesfield - maybe one day someone will describe Tyntesfield without saying "the man who built it made his money from Peruvian bird poo" but that day isn't today. The scones were a bird poo-free zone.
• Sudbury Hall - a great house AND the Museum of Childhood starring Sooty and Sindy AND an outstanding scone! What more do you want from life.
• Melford Hall - famed for its celebrity resident, the original Jemima Puddleduck! Her views on scones are not known.
• Wallington - the former home of Charles Edward Trevelyan, the third most hated man in Ireland (after Oliver Cromwell and Thierry Henry), who was name-checked in The Fields of Athenry.
• Belton House - the kids book and 80s TV show, Moondial, was set at Belton! And when I tweeted that I'd been there, the actor who played Tom responded! Fantastic.
• Felbrigg Hall - poor old William Frederick 'Mad' Windham - all he wanted to do was dress up as a train guard and blow a whistle on the station platform at inopportune moments. Instead he ran up huge debts and lost Felbrigg. Amazing scone. 
• Hidcote - a beautiful garden built by "a dull little man" according to James Lees-Milne but we loved it AND we loved the scones!
• Plas Newydd - a fantastic scone on Anglesey! We only really went there to see the Victorian dude who dressed like Noddy Holder 50 years before Nodders was born!
• Dyrham Park - superb scones AND free 17th century hot chocolate (the recipe is from the 17th century, not the actual hot chocolate)!
• Trengwainton Garden - the 5th NT scone we'd eaten in 48 hours during our Tour of Cornwall and it was FAB!
• Trerice - a quiet little manor house near the not-so-quiet town of Newquay, with AMAZING scones!
• Trelissick - the house may be relatively new to the NT but they've certainly got to grips with the scones!
• Boscastle - a little Cornish fishing village that was almost washed away in 2004 - unusual scones but absolutely top-rate!
• Acorn Bank - the third top-class scone on the Spring Tour to the Lake District!
• Sizergh Castle - amazing scone AND a copy of Wham!'s Greatest Hits!
• Wordsworth House - I was moved to compose a poem about the Wordsworth House scone - I expect a call about being Poet Laureate any day!
• Saltram - everything went wrong on our first trip of 2016, apart from the scone!
• Fountains Abbey - it was in the video for Maid of Orleans by OMD! And it had fantastic scones!
• Lanhydrock - our first foray into Cornwall and we were not disappointed! Fantastic scone!
• Biddulph Grange Garden - they had a singing tree and a golden water buffalo but nothing could upstage the scones!
• Nostell Priory - one of the best properties EVER with THREE types of scone!
• Coughton Court - 7 of the 13 Gunpowder Plotters were Throckmortons! Somehow they kept hold of Coughton and are still there today! 
• Tredegar House - fantastic scones AND they keep a Dalek in the stables (Doctor Who is filmed there)! 
• Anglesey Abbey - they have a working flour mill! You can buy bags of flour that you transform into scones that won't be as good as the ones here!
• Montacute House - they filmed Wolf Hall here! If only Anne Boleyn had been able to bake scones like these, it could all have turned out differently!
• Goddards - brilliant scones at the house once owned by Noel Terry, of Chocolate Orange fame! There used to be a Terry's Chocolate Apple as well! 
• Beningbrough Hall - spectacular works of art (and a few pictures on loan from the National Portrait Gallery as well, boom, boom!)
• Sissinghurst Castle - did you see the scones, Orlando? They were great - and fantastic gardens too, in the former home of Vita Sackville-West!
• South Foreland Lighthouse - excellent sconeage in this 'shining' example of a National Trust property HA HA! 
• The White Cliffs of Dover - I didn't see any bluebirds overhead but I did see two very, very good scones. And lots of ferries!
• Speke Hall - it has the River Mersey, it has a priest hole, it has a baker on Twitter, it has fantastic scones, I LOVED it!
• Studland Beach - famous for the UK's most popular naturist beach, for inspiring Noddy's Toytown, and now for very good scones!
• A la Ronde - a round house full of trinkets AND fantastic scones, what more do you want from life? 
• Upton House and Gardens - a lot of pictures, an outdoor swimming pool, and truly excellent scones!
• Treasurer's House, York - they had a Christmas pudding scone with brandy butter that I literally still dream about!
• Hinton Ampner - lots of sheep and fantastic scones!
• Uppark - burned to the ground a few years ago while it was open to visitors, but now restored and serving very excellent scones!
• Stowe - it costs £30,000 a year to attend Stowe school - I'd rather spend that on scones, personally!
• Charlecote Park - William Shakespeare was once caught stealing a scone from Charlecote Park. Did I say scone? I meant deer.
• Bateman's - "Well I'm the king of the sconers/the tea-room VIP", as Rudyard Kipling would have written if he'd had scones at Batemans!
• Claremont Landscape Garden - more of a park than a garden but who's counting - the scones were fantastic!
• Standen - tests proved that the Standen scone was genetically closer to a cloud than a baked foodstuff!
• Nymans - another place that burned down (before the National Trust was involved), now serving amazing scones!
• Waddesdon Manor - they have a mechanical elephant that flaps its ears at Waddesdon but as an attraction it's no match for the top-class scones!
• Scotney Castle - the scones were EPIC. Scotney also had a Banana and Walnut Scone of the Month and Richard Gere, who filmed Yanks there!
• Dunwich Heath - they had 20 TYPES OF SCONE at the Sconeathon we attended! Sticky Toffee, Chocolate Orange, Apple & Cinnamon, Malteser...!
• Morden Hall Park - big, warm, and glazed. 'Morden enough' to warrant a five out of five (ha ha ha! Sorry.)
• Sutton House - Sir Ralph Sadleir of Wolf Hall fame built Sutton House - go along and see them bring out the sconies!
• Quarry Bank Mill - amazing scones in one of the most fascinating NT properties ever - you can even buy a tea towel made in the cotton mill!
• Flatford Bridge Cottage - we helped bake the scones at Flatford but we gave them 5 because they were mince pie scones and they were ruddy delicious! 
• Winkworth Arboretum - a very understated place - not a fridge magnet to be had - but serving fantastic scones!
• Houghton Mill - the Scone Blogger was very hungover but she soldiered on and tried the scone made from home-milled flour, which was DELICIOUS!
• Brownsea Island - we didn't see any red squirrels, which shows that they don't have very good taste as there was a Sconeathon on the day we visited!
• Bodiam Castle - our very first 5 out of 5, setting the benchmark for all!  

You can see all 137 scones on Pinterest. This year also saw the publication of the National Trust Book of Scones, which you can buy in NT shops or on the internet.

I'd like to sincerely thank all the lovely Sconepals for your ongoing support - keep sharing those National Trust scone sightings, either on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.

I still have a way to go until I have completed this National Trust Scone Odyssey - by my rough count, I have about 70 scones left to go. But I'm confident we can get there, so onwards and upwards!

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

The Book of Scones - Tried and Tested - Part Three

I'm on a roll with this project to bake every recipe in the National Trust Book of Scones. I want to prove that ANYONE can produce scone glory - ANYONE, even me.

I already shared my first five scones with you - including the dark horsedly-good Earl Grey scone - and then last week I shared scones 6-10, which included the world-famous Chocolate Orange scone.

So here we go with scones 11-15! 

The Cherry & Almond Scones
I am not really one for wasting spending time making things look nice - just ask anyone who has received a present wrapped by me, or anyone who has read my hand-writing. And if I had known in advance that the flaked almonds were for decoration only, I wouldn't have bought them. But I did, and I had to use them, so here you have probably the prettiest scones I've ever produced. They tasted fantastic too:

The Triple Chocolate Scones 
You HAVE to try these. You just have to. They are astonishingly good. They are even worth the pain of baking with cocoa - I had forgotten that the simple act of opening a tub of cocoa sends a spray of fine brown powder up into the air and and down onto every available surface in your kitchen. Wear an apron and you'll be fine.

The Honey, Sunflower Seed, & Ginger
If you said to me, "Scone Blogger, I bet you £20 that you could not get Gwyneth Paltrow to eat a scone," I would probably agree with you. But if I was going to persuade Gwynnie to consume more calories in one bite than she probably does in a week, I would ply her with these ones. Honey! Sunflower Seeds! Ginger! Nature's bounty in a very tasty scone.

The Chocolate & Hazelnut Scones
I'm not going to say much about these, as you're going to scroll down in a moment and see the same scones baked by someone with more of an eye for detail - but these tasted absolutely delicious.

The Chocolate & Marshmallow Scones
I had a catastrophe with these ones. And before you say "yeah, look at the state of them! How did they end up that shape?", it's not the mishapenness I'm talking about, nor the enormous hunks of chocolate that look like they're trying to escape because I failed to chop them up properly. I forgot to put the cocoa in. Maybe the experience of baking the Triple Chocolate scones did affect me after all. They still tasted lovely.

I'm now going to humiliate myself by showing you an example of a Sconepal bake. These are the Chocolate Hazelnut as baked by Sconepal Emma Jayne. Now look back at my Chocolate Hazelnuts above. I think I need to work on my aesthetics.

I love seeing photos of your scone bakes, so keep sending them!

The Book of Scones - Tried and Tested - Part Two

I'm like a woman possessed these days - a woman possessed by scones. For four years I have been trotting around the country eating them for this blog, which does require a certain devotion to the cause. 

But once the Book of Scones was published, I decided I had to bake all 50 recipes. I am not an expert baker. If I can do it, anyone can.

I've already reported on the results of my first five scone bakes, including the astoundingly delicious Earl Grey scone.

So eyes down for recipes 6-10:

The Chocolate Orange
Where would the world be without the Terry's Chocolate Orange? Sad and diminished, that's where we'd be. And the very excellent NT property, Goddard's up near York, probably wouldn't exist, as it was built by Noel Goddard Terry. You possibly need to chop the Chocolate Orange into smaller pieces than I did before adding them to the scone mixture - I was eating the Chocolate Orange faster than I was chopping it, so I had to speed things up - but they taste divine.

The Wet Nelly
If you're in a hurry, then the Wet Nelly scone from Speke Hall is probably not for you. This is because you have to make the Wet Nelly (a type of bread pudding) before you put it in the scone mixture - unless you have loads of Wet Nelly lying around, in which case work away. My friend Kathy came to my house as I took these out of the oven and once she got over the shock of seeing me baking, she was genuinely shocked again by how absolutely delicious these scones were. Well worth the effort.

The Rhubarb & Ginger
I'm not the world's biggest fan of rhubarb - as you know if you read about my trip to Clumber Park - but the rhubarb and ginger scones were fantastic.

The Ulster scones
These were amazing - they taste like Irish soda bread in a scone. The cherries were optional; I would probably leave them out next time as I think the scones taste good enough without them.

The Raspberry & White Chocolate
It was very late when I baked these scones, it was hot and the raspberries were turning to mush, and I'd eaten most of the Milky Bar Buttons. But somehow these still turned out to be absolutely delicious. It's the magic of the scone.

So there you have it - 10 scones done, 40 to go. Remember to send me your pictures of your scone bakes - I've seen some absolute corkers that put my efforts to shame.

Peckover House and Garden

Peckover House in Wisbech was built in 1722. Sometime after 1794, it was purchased by Jonathan Peckover. How amazingly lucky he was, I thought to myself, to find a house with the same name as him. But don't worry, folks; the penny dropped before I said that out loud - I'm sharing it here as we're all friends and you won't tell anyone. 

In fact, Peckover House only became Peckover House when the National Trust took it over in 1948. Before that it was known as Bank House, for reasons that will become apparent.

Here's what I learnt today at Peckover:

1. The Peckovers were Quakers

Jonathan Peckover was descended from Edmund Peckover, a soldier in Oliver Cromwell's army. Edmund became a follower of George Fox in 1655; Fox had established a Nonconformist religion, the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as Quakers.

Quakers believe that religious faith is a personal matter between the individual and God, rejecting the need for clergy or rituals. Known for their commitment to social justice, their teetotalism, and for fighting the fight against slavery and war, many well-known businesses were set up by Quakers, including Cadbury, Rowntree, Barclays, Lloyds, and Clarks shoes.

2. The Peckovers were bankers
Jonathan started out as a grocer but soon began holding onto his customers' cash for safe-keeping (at their request, I hasten to add). His bank had just seven accounts in its ledger in 1782 but it grew and survived many financial booms and busts until it was subsumed into Barclays Bank in 1896.

Peckover House was home to the bank until 1879, when it moved to new premises nearby - and that building is still the Wisbech branch of Barclays Bank today.

3. Banking was a heavy old game
This is one of the ledgers from the bank. I'll never complain about Microsoft Excel again.

A rare sighting of my sister, aka Dr Watscone,
marvelling at the office admin tools of yesteryear.

4. Banking was also a bit of a dangerous old game
The man-trap shown below is also on display at Peckover. It would have been positioned in the gardens outside the house during its days as a bank. If a would-be robber tried to gain access, the trap would have grabbed them. There was also a blunderbuss that would have been used to fend off highwaymen who attacked the bank's staff and funds. Banking was not for the faint-hearted.

Believe it or not, this is a humane man-trap - as Quakers, the Peckovers would not have condoned the use of a device that maimed or even killed a burglar that walked into it. Not sure if/how they got around using the blunderbuss.

5. I want to live in Peckover House 

Like Rob in the book Hi-Fidelity by Nick Hornby, I spend a lot of my time making lists of my top-fives. Naturally my top-fives all relate to the National Trust and not to music. But one of my top-fives is "Top Five National Trust Houses I Would Move Into Tomorrow If the National Trust Would Let Me". 

Peckover House goes straight into that Top Five. It feels so homely and comfortable with a huge amount of light. I'll start packing.

The Morning Room at Peckover

(If you'd like to know the other four properties in the Top Five National Trust Houses I Would Move Into Tomorrow If the National Trust Would Let Me: Hughenden, Sunnycroft, and at joint number one: Goddards and Bateman's. Let me know yours - when I finally get round to setting up a Sconepal AGM, this will be the subject of the first debate.)

6. Peckover scones are bloomin' excellent

My sister has now done several scone expeditions with me and so she has picked up my dread that the scones will have run out by the time we get there. And it was a very really fear today; we didn't get to the tea-room until 4pm. 

But we needn't have worried; there were plenty of scones AND THEY WERE WARM. They were light and fluffy inside and slightly crisp on the outside - a complete triumph and worthy of a unanimous 5 stars.

I'll end by praising the surprising loveliness of the town of Wisbech. I grew up in the Midlands, but for some reason we had to watch Look East and other East Anglian news programmes. Wisbech was always getting a mention, along with Felixstowe and other places that might as well have been on the moon for all I knew of them, so I took against them a bit and have harboured that irrational dislike for about 40 years. And now I go and visit them and think "THIS IS A LOVELY PLACE! Why was I not told about this? Pah!"

ALSO, for all you National Trust fact-fans, Wisbech was the birthplace of Octavia Hill, one of the founders of the National Trust! So there you have it. 

Peckover House: 5 out of 5
Scones: 5 out of 5
Surprising loveliness of Wisbech: 5 out of 5