B2B Day 23 A Rest Day to Visit Dyrham Park

Today was a rest day at West Littleton in order to visit the house at Dyrham Park.

Our breakfast was outstanding, with a delicious fruit salad of blueberries, strawberries, and nectarine; also nice cereals and wholemeal toast. Ken had a cooked breakfast of sausage, bacon and egg, and he said that it was the best sausage of the trip.

We first walked (in the light rain) to the village church, which we enjoyed seeing and singing in. Apparently it is being used in the filming of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon, so we’ll enjoy watching for it when the film comes out.

The church at West Littleton

The walk to Dyrham Park was around two miles. We had the options of taking a more direct field path or a slightly longer route that included walking alongside the A-road (an A road is one of the busiest roads). Our host Boo was very helpful in providing us with local knowledge that the field path would be muddy and drenching with rapeseed in it (been there, done that!), and she said that there was a good verge at the side of the A-road all the way to Dyrham Park. We opted for the road. There was indeed a wide, mown verge. However, someone turned up the amount of rain when we got onto the A-road, and it just pelted down. We just put down our heads and walked. There was a lot of road spray, and Sara was especially impressed (and even touched) by how a huge truck moved out of its lane (since there was no oncoming traffic) to avoid splashing the two hunched down walkers at the side of the road. We arrived at the driveway where cars would enter Dyrham Park, walked down a short way, and saw what looked like a shuttle bus from the car park. Ken shouted over the weather, “Let’s take it!” and we did, though Sara was initially distracted by Ken’s having said that someone who looked like Patrick Stewart was parking his car. [We later saw the visitor, who was not Patrick Stewart.] We got on the shuttle bus and were taken to the entrance of the house. Only afterwards did we realize that people were supposed to pay the entry fee before getting on the bus, but we had paid memberships, so it turned out okay.

A friendly volunteer met us and showed us where to start our tour, so we read all of the information in the display in the basement before attending a seventeenth-century “tea tasting.” We tasted some gunpowder green tea, which gained its name because of the dried tea leaves’ resemblance to gunpowder, not because of the taste. We learned the secret for green tea is not to use boiling water—you should either pour the water before it boils, or let it sit a minute after boiling. It was delicious tea, and won over Sara, who is not really a fan of green tea. We were talking about different taxes, and Sara puzzled one of the volunteers with a reference to the candle tax. Hopefully they found it something interesting to research—there really was a tax on wax candles, and there was a substantial fine if a person attempted to make candles himself to avoid paying the candle tax.

We toured the house from about 11:30-1:00. In the first room, we listened to a woman play the harpsichord and another woman play the viola de gamba, which was made in 1963 and had an otter with a crown on the tuning head. Ken asked about it, and the viola was made in a European country (we can’t remember which one—Belgium?) in which an otter with a crown was part of the king’s coat of arms. There was a legend of the king visiting an estate with all of the people lined up to see him, and as he stood on a bridge over the river, his crown blew off, and out of the river an otter popped up with the crown on his head. We enjoyed the story, and the music. 

The house was interesting, though there were fewer rooms open than we had anticipated, so it felt as though our tour suddenly ended after a short time. We went to the café for a warm lunch—a coconut curry and a jacket potato with cheese, with almond cherry cake and tea to finish off. And a gingerbread sheep biscuit. As we were leaving the café we had a good chat with a couple of women who were doing the Cotswold Way in the opposite direction to us. They said that the paths were very muddy and slippery in the direction we were headed.

After lunch we went to the front of the house and Ken took several photos of the house and the deer, who seemed fairly tame. Ken noted that the exterior was used in the film The Remains of the Day.

Dyrham Park, the East Front

 

"Say, who is that strange guy with a camera?"

We wandered about the gardens a bit, since the weather had cleared up and there was an occasional gleam of sunshine. 

But we were on time for our 3:30 “Behind the Scenes” tour with volunteers Liz and Clive. They described some of the work conservators do to address the problems of insects and other vermin that attack the objects and house. They also took us up to the storage areas and showed us some of the objects that aren’t on display and might never be on display at the museum, including a doll selling all kinds of miniature “wares,” and a document permitting the owner of Dyrham to keep deer and pheasant, a document which had Henry VIII’s signature and seal on it. That was pretty cool, to be up close to an original signature and seal like that (although we’re not huge Henry VIII fans). We learned that there was a ten-year wait to get tapestries cleaned and conserved in Belgium, though some cleaning and preservation work is also done at Blickling Manor (Sara thought that tapestry restoration might be a good occupation to go into, with that kind of backlog). The tour concluded with a look at the roof project they did at Dyrham Park a few years ago. 

Apparently while the project was going on, people could visit the house at the roof level, and it was accessible for people in wheelchairs as well, to go up on a lift and see the house and the work, which was a moving experience for people who ordinarily can’t experience that kind of tour. It was pretty cool.

We rested in the café a bit more and then went to the church next door and looked around. 

The same volunteer who had met us in the morning happened to be there to close the church, so we chatted together as we all walked out. From there, we walked to The Bull in Hinton, and sat at a picnic table outside till they opened at 6:00. We really liked this pub. Our table was in the snug, and we loved the music mix they were playing.

We decided to order a “bite” before hand, bread with herb butter. Ken had a burger and Sara had gnocchi in a creamy pesto sauce with butternut squash and broccoli—it was amazing! It wins for the best dish Sara had on this trip. Our host Boo picked us up, and we were home around 8:30 to read some more before falling asleep. Ken did finish reading Bill Bryson’s Down Under.