An Elizabethan House and Garden

On Monday we made a visit to Montacute House. We stopped for a very pleasant lunch at The Phelips Arms first. This is in the village which itself looks like a picture postcard. It is an ideal setting for a film set and I am sure must get used as much. They just need to put away their recycling boxes.

We then headed for the gardens of Montacute House while the weather was still fine. These are formal gardens mainly of an Elizabethan style. They consist of a lot of yew hedges and yew trees. The hedges are clipped into some interesting shapes.

We were also intrigued by the swirls in the bark of this sweet chestnut tree.

The gazebos that I mentioned yesterday dominate a lot of the garden with many paths leading to them.

Both of these little houses are now empty although apparently they would originally have had an upstairs floor and were used for overflow guest rooms!

The house itself is an imposing building with quite a lot of outside decoration.

Directly in front of the house is a gate out into the parkland with a vista down an avenue of trees. We tried to imagine them out for their morning ride.

The formal fountain dominates the other part of the garden.

It has some impressive if not rather scary fish it.

I didn't take any pictures in the house other than this stained glass window.

The house has none of its original furnishings but has been furnished with suitable items. It is not the most atmospheric house but does have an interesting long gallery and it is possible to imagine the ladies walking up and down in inclement weather. This area now contains part of the National Portrait Gallery and I can remember visiting this when on a school visit when studying Tudors and Stuarts for A Level history.