I’d forgotten that we actually fitted something else into today’s packed schedule. We did a short detour to a place called Lyveden New Bield. (Don’t ask.)
This is a National Trust place set in the middle of nowhere, and began life as a stately home for a Catholic family, the Treshams. It was begun between 1595 and 1605, but because Catholics were on the out at that time in English history, fines and penalties - and one of the sons being involved in the Gunpowder Plot - meant that the house and its architecturally planned garden was never finished.
Consequently what is left, still standing after 400 years, is the shell of what would have been a lovely home. Many things are in place: fireplaces, the decorations over doors, the decorations around the outside of the building, the underpinnings of a spiral staircase, the inner drainpipes. It’s like seeing a stately home stripped of its interiors, including floors, so that you can look straight up from basement to the top walls of the house. There’s no roof or ceiling either.
The gardens are lovely, although again because it was so hot we didn’t walk as far as we might have done. But we did go round the spiral Mount (a raised area a short distance away from the house which has a spiral path on it), and crossed over the man-made lakes on a short bridge. There are orchards as well, but we didn’t get that far.
An oddity, but worth visiting, especially on a day like today.
2 comments:
Seems like a good place to start if you are a bit timid and maybe want to trial touring a house before actually touring one. This way it makes it easier cos it's only half built.
Er....right. I'm sure there's a logic there somewhere....
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