North Yorkshire is well endowed with magnificent remains of medieval monasteries. I’ve visited and written about many of them, including Fountains Abbey, Reivaulx Abbey and Whitby Abbey. However there are two abbeys that I had driven passed many times, but never stopped to explore: Jervaulx Abbey and Bolton Abbey. Maybe as a member of English […]
There are thirteen National Trust properties in Norfolk including five spectacular coastal sites. However my favourite properties are the estates at Blickling and Felbrigg, situated fourteen and twenty-one miles respectively north of Norwich. Both Blickling Estate and Felbrigg Hall, Gardens and Estate – to give them their full National Trust titles – are well endowed […]
The Halls at Hardwick on the eastern fringes of Derbyshire are lasting memorials to two formidable ladies, Bess of Hardwick (1527-1608) and Evelyn Cavendish (1870-1960). Bess, or to give her her full title, Elizabeth Cavendish (later Talbot), Countess of Shrewsbury, managed, with the help of four marriages, to become the second most powerful woman in […]
Visiting a National Trust property on a showery day can make sense, in that you can look around the house (or shop and tea room) when it is raining, and tour the gardens and parkland between the showers. Well that was our idea when we visited Hanbury Hall in Worcestershire on a wet weekday in […]
The National Trust promotes Calke Abbey as the ‘un-stately’ stately home, and indeed many of the rooms in the house are in a bad state of decoration and are overflowing with masses of bric-a brac. I found it interesting up to a point to check out what appealed to aristocratic hoarders and it made me […]
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National Trust Northamptonshire: Canons Ashby
We were fortunate to find the Canons Ashby site fully open when we visited on a weekday in early February. It had been closed during January for maintenance and apparently in previous years the house itself did not open until Easter. Many heritage properties are subject to winter closures – see below for details. The […]