Yesterday afternoon we motored over to Shelley, a village some miles from us, where an art exhibition was being held in the Church, and in the village four houses had opened their gardens to raise money for the church building (almost exactly what we did last Saturday in Highdale). The Art exhibition was small but good, and all the artists were from the small village. Of the four houses whose gardens had been thrown open, three were of the Hall, Shelley House, and Shelley Manor type (I've already forgotten which was which) and the fourth was a big converted barn. All the gardens were very large, nothing of the 'hidden gardens' type about them, except that they were all well away from a road, thoroughly excluded.
The one above (and below) was probably pre Tudor.
The same house, but a lovely mix of the old and the High Tech new.
The one above, and shown in the next few photoes, was a lovely old house, built in 1520 (with a good many additions, I should think, had, about fifty yards from the house, a large moat. It was always thought that the previous manor house had been surrounded by the moat, but aerial photoes and examination seemed to show that a large garden had stood on the moated area, so the present owners have tried to restore what had been there.
The photo above is in the wrong place. It is the restored barn. The owners are professional plant breeders and showed irises, successfully,
at the Chelsea Flower Show this year!
This last photie is back to the moated garden next to the Manor House, which can be seen in the background.
It was a lovely afternoon out, and we rather wished we'd made a day of it rather than just an afternoon.
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P.s. Would just like to record that the people at the gardens we visited yesterday, told us how much they'd enjoyed their visit to our garden the previous weekend. In view of the fact that ours is a pocket handkerchief of a garden in comparison to the Shelley ones, we found this reassuring!!!!!
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3 comments:
Wonderful old pile ~ and mellow meadowed grounds
They looks so peaceful.
Glad to have you back on line Mike, I take it you're on Windows 10 now???
sorry you've ben poorly, don't let the new 'pooter stress you out, take your time with it, you'll soon having it eating out of your hand and doing tricks to amuse your readers.
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