Penshurst Place, the gardens and grounds.

The pond and statue in the formal garden

As promised in my last blog, here is another visit to Penshurst Place, this time concentrating on the magnificent gardens.

Diana’s Bath

After our rather long tea and cake break, Sheila and I headed off into the gardens. It was getting quite late by this time, and we had the gardens more or less to ourselves. The gardens are in a series of ‘rooms’ each one enclosed with yew hedges, each one just as beautiful as the last.

The Porcupine, the Sidney family Crest.

In front or the House is the Italian Garden, a beautiful formal garden with a large central pond and statue. The best views of the house are from this garden, and from here we wandered through the maze of smaller gardens, enjoying the herbaceous borders, the orchard, the Union Flag Garden and Diana’s Bath, a beautiful fountain.

Sadly we did manage to miss some of the gardens, but the ones we saw were wonderful. We were also too late to go round the Maize Maze, which was laid out in the shape of a crown, but in spite of this we had a really lovely time, and we will just have to visit Penshurst again soon won’t we? I hope you have enjoyed the photos, and if you ever get the chance do try to visit this wonderful place, you will not be disappointed.

The Union Flag Garden, with Lavender for the blue colour, and red and white roses for the red and white of the flag

Penshurst Place

For a very long time I have wanted to visit Penshurst Place, the ancestral home of the Sidney family, and finally last month I managed to get there, along with my photo buddy Sheila, who did a grand job of driving us there, with a little bit of help from her sat. nav!

We arrived at Penshurst about 1pm on a beautiful August day, and chose to look round the house first. Penshurst Place is the family home of the De Lisle family, and the oldest part of the building is the Barons Hall which is Medieval, and is the first room you enter in the house. The Hall is magnificent with a wonderful Medieval beamed ceiling and an amazing octagonal central fire hearth, where a fire is still lit at times. I have never seen a central hearth anywhere before, it is easy to imagine the smoke rising from the fire and escaping through a vent in the ceiling. The vent is no longer there, but all round the walls at the base of the ceiling are a number of carved wooden figures, life size, but all having had their legs cut off below the knees at some time. The guide told us that the legs may have been cut off  with maybe the intention of making a lower ceiling, which fortunately never happened!

We continued with our tour of the house, all the rooms are just amazing, from the Solar (or State Dining Room) with its squint hole, where people down in the Baron’s Hall can be viewed in secret, through to the Long Gallery, with its bleached oak panelled walls. There are many wonderful paintings, tapestries and furniture in the house, and we spent some time looking through each room.

The Barons Hall is the building with the orange roof.

After leaving the house we headed towards the formal gardens at the front of the building, which is where most of the photos were taken, as you can see the whole building is just really beautiful. By this time we were in need of a cup of tea, so we made our way to the Restaurant and enjoyed our cup of tea and piece of cake under the shade of a large tree. It was so lovely there that we sat there for rather a long time, just putting the world to rights!

Tea time, a lovely place to enjoy a cuppa

No photography was allowed in the house, but there are photos to be found on the internet if you would like to see some interior views of the house.

As usual I have taken too many photos, so I will do a second blog sharing some photos of the gardens and grounds. The photos are all ready so I will try to get the next blog up over the next couple of days.

Medieval Fayre, Sandwich, Kent.

Me in the stocks..

..so Alice had to go in them too!

Back in June my daughter Alice and I went to the Medieval Fayre held just outside Sandwich. Driving into work the previous few days I had seen the beautiful striped tents going up in a field, so we had to go and see what it was all about. The Fayre was held next to a farm shop on the outskirts of the town. It was a lovely sunny day, and we were greeted by the slightly scary man standing by the stocks. My daughter would not go into the stocks until I went first!! I would not like to be stuck in those for very long, but it was a great start to a lovely afternoon.

Girls working on a tapestry.

Medieval food, it looked lovely.

Cooking utensils.

There was a lot going on in the Fayre, cooking demonstrations, singing and dancing in the arena, stalls selling weapons, beautiful leather goods, jewellery, and numerous other craft stalls. A lot of thought and preparation had obviously gone into the fayre, and Alice and I had a lovely time.

Playing a musical instrument, I love the sound of medieval music.

Musical instruments.

After wandering around for some time we decided to get some food, so we made our way to the barn, where hot dogs and burgers were being cooked. We got there just in time to buy the last two sausages for the hot dogs, they were delicious, as were the large pieces of cake and big mugs of tea that went with them

Loading the guns.

Getting ready to fire.

This event takes place every two years, I will be going again, I wonder who I can get into the stocks next time??? Ha ha. 

Singing in the arena.

Fowlmead and a Ham Sandwich

I think some of you will remember my visiting Fowlmead last year, in January. Fowlmead is a country park which has been created on the tip that was left from Betteshanger Colliery. I remarked on my last blog that I thought the park would improve over time.

On Wednesday I re-visited the park with my lovely friends Pat, Shaun, Kris, Steve and their 2 grandchildren. We met up about 9.30am, only to find that Shaun’s motorized scooter simply was not going to play and totally refused to start! Not a good start, but we all repaired to the cafe for a cuppa and to have a think. Shaun spotted a notice saying the park rents out disabled bikes, so we inquired and Shaun thought he would be ok on a hand pedalled bike, which he was, so off we all went. I have to say he did amazingly well, although I understand his poor back and arms were very sore the next day.

I took an almost identical shot to this last time I was here.

We set off towards the lake, then Pat and I both got our cameras out, and soon we had been left behind by the others. We had a lovely time looking at the views, the wild flowers and talking to the trees – that was Pat, but only because I told her to go and ask the tree how old it was….. we giggled a lot as you can imagine. We happily snapped away for a while, then thought maybe we ought to catch the others up. Pat said I nearly got her lost, but I didn’t really….well ok, I admit I need a sat nav. fitted to me, but we found the others without too much trouble and made our way back to the visitors centre. I think I can safely say we all had a really lovely couple of hours, hopefully we will do it again soon, provided we can all run fast enough to keep up with Shaun that is!!

These seed heads were so soft to touch..Pat and I now call these ‘Teddy Bear shaving bushes’ 

Just to finish off the blog, I knew this signpost existed somewhere, I have actually driven round trying to find it with no luck. Wednesday evening my friend and I were on our way to the pub, when she spotted the sign!! I was really pleased, so at last here is my photo of Ham Sandwich!!