Treasurer’s House in York is a National Trust property in the shadow of York Minster. The treasurer was controller of the Minster’s finances and entertained important guests until 1547 when the job of treasurer came to an end. The current building’s design is due to the work of Thomas Young, Archbishop of York between 1561 and 1568 who almost entirely rebuilt the house.
Paycocke’s House and Garden is a National Trust property in Coggeshall, Essex. The house was built in 1509 by Thomas Paycocke, a wealthy cloth merchant, one of the richest men in Coggeshall. The wool Paycocke produced, known as Coggeshall white, was said to be one of the best cloths in the country.
Charlecote Park is an impressive 16th century National Trust property on the banks of the River Avon in Warwickshire. Not only are the interiors beautifully decorated, but it is surrounded by a deer park where we were fortunate to get quite close to the deer, and the River Avon is literally on its door step.
Not far from St Paul’s Cathedral is Christchurch Greyfriars Church Garden. It is the impressive ruins of one of Christopher Wren’s churches that was heavily damaged in the Blitz on 29 December 1940.
The last place I visited in September as part of Open Heritage Day was Brackenhurst Hall in Southwell, part of Nottingham Trent University that isn’t normally open to the public. I arrived just as they opened so I got to go on the first of the tours that day, which is just as well as there was a fairly constant stream of people arriving throughout my visit.
Avebury Manor is a National Trust property in Wiltshire, right next to Avebury Stone Circle (the subject of my next post). Built in the 1550s the BBC used it in a TV project where they redecorated and refurnished the rooms so that each one reflects a different time period, from the Tudors to the 1930s.
Bromley House Library is in a gorgeous Georgian townhouse on Angel Row in Nottingham that was built in 1752 for George Smith, grandson of the founders of Smiths Bank. I’ve passed the front door a countless amount of times and never noticed it was there. I first heard about it a couple of years ago but it was only this year, when the library is celebrating 200 years of continuous operation that I finally got around to going on one of their free tours.
St Mary’s Rest Garden is a small park next to Victoria Park and the Victoria Swimming Baths in Nottingham. Formally a cemetery, a Quaker by the name of Samuel Fox donated the land after an outbreak of cholera in 1835.
On the same day I visited the Monument to the Great Fire of London I walked a little further down the road until I came to St Dunstan in the East, a Church of England church built around 1100 that was badly damaged in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
Whilst visiting Litchfield Cathedral I noted that directly opposite the front entrance was the Erasmus Darwin House and Herb Garden. Erasmus was Charles Darwin’s grandfather who came to Litchfield in 1756 and moved into this house with his wife in 1758.
