Wrest Park on a perfect day...The House and Formal Gardens

9 comments

The sun was shining and the people went on the Bank Holiday, we picked the Tuesday, it was bliss.

For over 600yrs Wrest Estate was home to one of the leading aristrocratic families in the country,the de Greys, Edmund Grey was made 1st Earl of Kent by Edward1V, over 200yrs later the formal gardens were created, over generations the gardens have been improved with many famous garden designers and architects working here, they included Thomas Ackres, Batty Langley, Thomas Archer, Thomas Wright and Capability Brown…

…………………………………………………………………….. …………………………
The house as it is today was rebuilt in the 1830’s, since 1900 Wrest has had a chequered history, it was rented out to the American Ambassador then used as a hospital in The First World War when it was damaged by fire, although being repaired Wrest was sold in 1917 and became sadly neglected…………………

From 1948 it became home to the National Institute of Agricultural Engineering later the Silsoe Research Institute, it is now English Heritage who are in the proccess of restoring both the house and gardens.. Inside the house visitors are only allowed to view the ground floor, not sure whether they are restoring upstairs, (I meant to ask but forgot) hope so and the restoration program is apparently going on for twenty years.

Inside the orangery…

It says in the brochure to allow Ihr 30mins to look around the park, unless you are in a rush and don’t mind missing loads then I guess that could be true, my daughter and I were there all day and still we missed some but that gives an excuse for a return visit, of course we had tea and scones..

Couldn’t possibly forget to bring a present home with me..

Hope I haven’t bored you, will show the park and all its treasures in another blog…

• 12 May, 2013
• 18 likes

More blog posts by lincslass