Petworth Park

Petworth Park

We met up with our friends Viv and Giles for this lovely walk in Petworth Park. We started in the northernmost car park and headed across the lovely undulating parkland - created by Capability Brown between 1751 and 1764. Our first view of the Park is shown above.

After a while we noticed an increasing number of people in hunting garb riding across our route towards the house. This view, looking back, shows a couple of them.



We pondered what they might be hunting and concluded that they were drag hunting. Or maybe hunting in drag, cue general hilarity and unrepeatable jokes.

Once we reached the far hillside, this fine folly came into view.



A little further on there was a wonderful view across the park.



We now left the park and walked along the road into the village of Tillington. We enjoyed a notice on the outside of the Post Office offering to transact insurance and annuity business. When did that date from? The church of All Hallows, opposite, was mostly rebuilt and enlarged between 1807 and 1837. Its unusual Scots crown tower is distinctive.



We admired the pair of knightly - or perhaps kingly - gargoyles on either side of the main door.



After a further stretch along the road, we reached the main entrance to Petworth House. We walked up the main drive, past Capability Brown's fine lake.



And then studied the rear facade of the House itself across a vast lawn. The House dates from 1688 and was built, on the site of an earlier house, for Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset. It holds a fine and famous collection of paintings, but unfortunately for us had just closed for the winter.



There now followed a long diagonal stretch across the park, past an area where a large herd of deer had gathered, back to the car park. Petworth is famous for having the oldest and largest herd of fallow deer in the UK.



Cloudy with a threat of rain.

Distance: almost 5 miles.

Rating: four stars. We have walked in a few country house parks (Hatfield House, Claydon House, Audley End, Lyme Park ), but this was surely one of the finest.

Hatfield House

Hatfield House

Following our established policy, we decided to visit Hatfield House on our way back from a visit to Cambridge. Last year we did a walk around Audley End, a similarly magnificent Jacobean house. This time it was not possible to walk around the perimeter, but we found a lovely 3 mile walk within the park on the Hatfield House website, which we did after a quick tour of the house and gardens.

You walk along the drive and then down a slope into woodland - first broad leaved trees and then pine. There was a surprising amount of traffic noise as you approached the edge of the park. After a mile or so you come to the Broadwater, an area of the River Lea which was dammed to provide power for a water mill. What appears to be the left bank in the photo is in fact an island, which boasts twenty species of oak. It really is a very pretty spot.



You walk along the bank for a way and then turn away through woodland to reach the castle folly at the end of an estate road. It dates from the 1780s, although the brick wall is older (1633) and surrounds the secret garden.



The route from here goes parallel to the Broadwater and then returns to it. A short way along the bank, the imaginatively named Red Bridge marks the end of the lake, with the mill pool behind it.



Up close it is revealed to be closed and in a poor state of repair.

After leaving the woodland, the next section is across farmland and you could easily forget you were in the park of a great house. This leads into more conventional parkland: cut grass, scattered trees, saplings in wooden enclosures to protect them from the deer.

Finally the rear facade of the house comes into view and the walk is complete.



Conditions: warm and sunny.

Distance: 3 miles.

Rating: three and half stars.


Hatfield House

Hatfield House was built in 1611 by Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury and Chief Minister to James I. It is still the home of the Cecil family.

I had not realised that there was also an Old Palace a couple of hundred yards from the house. It was built between 1485 and 1497 for John Morton, bishop of Ely. It was confiscated by Henry VIII after the dissolution of the monasteries and it was here that Elizabeth I spent much of her childhood. The building which is visible today is the former Great Hall, just one wing of the palace.



It is a fascinating building. The dark red brick and church-like appearance put you in mind of Victorian rather than Tudor architecture.

Fontainebleau

The cour d'honneur

We are in France on a short break specifically to see Fontainebleau and Barbizon. The first thing we have learned is that we did't know how to pronounce it: not fon-tan-bleu, but fon-tan-blow. The story has it that the name derives from a contraction of the fontaine de belle-eau in the grounds. The Palace was rebuilt by Francois I who came to the throne in 1515 and represents the arrival of the Renaissance in France. Later construction was the work of Henri II and Henri IV. Much later, Napoleon made his mark on the interior, and famously bid his adieus before going off to exile in Elba.

I found this lovely walk around the gardens and the park on the website of the Fontainebleau Office de Tourisme. We started the circuit facing the chateau in the Cour d'honneur and turned right through an archway towards the Jardin Anglais. You approach this through a smaller arch, through which can be glimpsed a statue.


The garden is a green area surrounded by trees and shrubs. Not what we would think of as an English garden, although certainly the kind of thing you might find in the park of a country house.

From here we passed the fontaine de belle-eau and saw some beautiful autumn colours on the trees.


Emerging from a long formal avenue you suddenly come on the Etang des Carpes, with what we supposed must be the model for MPs' duck houses in its centre. It is apparently known simply as La Pavilion.



At the right side of the lake is the Avenue de Maintenon, named after Madame de Maintenon, the mistress and later wife of Louis XIV, with the Porte Doree at its end.



A bit further on, through some woods, you come on a marvelous vista of the whole chateau from front to back, with elaborate water features in the foreground and beyond them the Grand Parterre. The circular lake is known as La Romulus.


Completing a loop around this area, you come to a long, wide artificial canal which ultimately drains into the Seine.



You walk up the right hand side of the canal under tress, swing round to the left at the top and follow the outer edge of the park in an anti-clockwise direction. The route zigs zags back towards the chateau and is memorable for several splendid tree-lined avenues.




You return to the Grand Parterre with its formally structured, but very pretty, planting.



You pass the Porte Doree, go through into the Cour Ovale and pass through the Cour d'Honneur to complete the walk in the Jardin de Diana, with its ornamental peacocks.

Distance: about 5 miles.

Rating: four stars.

Audley End

Audley End

Returning from a visit to Cambridge, we decided to follow our usual policy of finding a walk. This one around Audley End was inspired by an internet search.

It begins near to Abbey Farm, south of Audley End house. We walked along a lane past redbrick Jacobean almshouses, now the College of St Mark and rather hard to get a clear sight of. Soon we entered the tiny village of Audley End with its mainly identical whitewashed Georgian cottages and tiny post office. It was a planned community built as part of the estate.



From here we walked east along Audley End road and turned through an iron gate to enter Audley Park: a typical great house park. We descended along the east side of the park and turned sharp left to follow the north side through first woodland and then grassy meadows.

We saw a bit of a nature drama at the edge of the woods: first we noticed a small rabbit in a clearing and then a flash of orange with a clear black end to its tail, as a stoat hurtled across the track we were following. There followed brief sounds of a struggle in the undergrowth and then silence.

The fields gave way to a wooded path around the wall of the estate and then we reached the B1383. Turning left along the road soon yielded a wonderful view of the house, with the 1790 folly known as the Temple of Concord visible on the hill behind.



Now we turned left again, crossed the stone bridge designed by Robert Adam, and reached the main entrance. After exploring the grounds and taking a very interesting and enjoyable tour of the house we returned through the village to the car.

Map: Explorer 195 (Braintree and Saffron Walden).

Rating: three and a half stars. The house is a wonderful sight, but the walk was a bit disappointing, there being less open park land and views than expected - and more road.


Audley End house

A very interesting house with impressive Jacobean plaster ceilings, interior features by Vanbrugh and Robert Adam, some nice paintings (Canaletto, Holbein, Lely) and landscaping by Capability Brown.

The most staggering discovery however was that the house we see today represents only about a sixth of the original structure. The site originally accommodated a monastery and was given to Sir Thomas Audley by Henry VIII after the Dissolution of the Monasteries for services rendered. These included presiding over the trials of Sir Thomas More and Anne Boleyn. He converted the monastic buildings into a substantial house.

However, within 50 years ownership had passed to Thomas Howard, who was created the first Earl of Suffolk by James I in 1603. Suffolk wanted to cement his new found position by creating a prodigy house and so razed the old buildings and had a magnificent palace constructed. The house consisted of two courtyards, one behind the other, and was completed in 1614. However, only a bit over a hundred years later the house had become too big to be affordable and was in poor repair. So it was drastically reduced in size and remodelled. The house which remains formed the axis between the two courtyards of the original prodigy house.

Apart from the house itself, the park includes the splendid Jacobean stables ...



... and Robert Adam's exquisite Tea House bridge, a sort of gazebo over the river.



Flower of the day

Not in truth a good day for flowers. But Herb Robert hasn't previously been flower of the day, so here it is.

Lyme Park

Lyme Park - rear facade

In Cheshire for a wedding, we went on this walk to try to clear away the resulting hangover. Lyme Park is an 18th century Palladian style country house set in vast grounds on the edge of the Peak District. The walk starts from the car park, passes the back of the house and then climbs to a building called the Cage, from which ladies would apparently watch hunting.

The Cage

From there, it climbs and swings around through woodland, above the side of the house and past a folly called the Lantern, built from stones taken from the Elizabethan house which preceded the current one and reaches the open moor. The bulk of the walk is a circuit of the outer edges of the estate across high windy moors, with splendid views in all directions.

The Lantern

Overall six miles of exhilarating walking, with the opportunity from the various ridges and high points to see where you've been before - always a bonus.

Rating: four stars.

From: Peak District Walks (Jarrold Pathfinder Guides).

Map: Explorer OL1.

Reflections

How unusual to start and end a walk from the car park of a National Trust property but reach isolated moorland before long - and then return to hordes and hordes of people picnicking beside the lake.

Sightings

Lots of sheep! A few orange tip and small white butterflies (or maybe they were female orange tips, which - rather unfairly - don't have any orange on their wings). Larks in the fields beside the descent from the moors and some lovely cowslips (unfortunately the photo was blurred). Unlike on my last walk nearer home in Arborfield the rhododendrons were not yet in flower.