Petworth House

I visited another stately home! This time it was Petworth House, located in, um, Petworth, West Sussex. As Mark and I had gone down to his parent's place for the weekend, we thought we might best take advantage of having access to a car/having annual memberships to the National Trust by visiting one of their local properties. We decided on Petworth House mainly because it was relatively nearby, was open on Saturdays, looked big, and was supposed to have a renowned art collection. So on Saturday morning, we hopped into the car, and pealed out.

To provide some context, Petworth House was built in the late 1600s (and revised over time, as is generally the case with these things) as the country seat of the Dukes of Somerset. It was 'blinged' out, so speak, thanks to one of these said dukes marrying the rich heiress of the Percy family (I don't know who they are, but I remembered the name so thought I'd toss it in there). The family collected vast quantities of art over the years, and England's favorite landscaper, J.M.W. Turner, was a frequent visitor of the house in the 1820s, and painted a number of interior and exterior views of the house. It was given to the National Trust in 1947, who have thus opened it the public, while the family still lives in one of the, um, areas (it was a rectangle, so it doesn't have wings). The house features extensive grounds, laid out by Capability Brown, to look conveniently natural. The grounds are currently home to the largest herd of fallow deer, um, let's say in England. You can see a few of them in the photo (sorry it's slightly askew, I was in a rush to get the running deer!). Watch out for deer droppings!

So there were intermittent rain showers on Saturday, this being England and all. But that doesn't generally have much impact on the inside of a house, so we ventured forth. I must say, the art collection in the house is very impressive, with a mix of portraits and landscapes, some by the aforementioned Turner. It seemed a lot of portraits were by van Dyck. The big ground floor rooms were all open, with handy little books available in each room telling you about each of the paintings and the furniture.

The two most impressive rooms (and by this I mean jaw-dropping) were the grand staircase and what was described as the carved drawing room. The grand staircase had a very interesting wall-decor. The walls were essentially murals, with the giant ceiling covered in one of those Greek god-like situations where everyone is wearing a toga and sitting on a cloud. The walls were what I found especially intriguing, as they were painted to give the impression of being 3D marble with insets (I hope that makes sense, not sure how else to desribe it!). I must say I have never seen anything quite like the carved room. The walls were dark wood panels, and were covered with extremely intricately carved lighter wood designs, primarily in the shapes of floral bouquests and fruits and other little bits of nature. The picture frames were also carved and formed part of the paneling, instead of being laid on top. To say the least, every inch of that room gave off the appearance of a piece of art. And it was really neat!

Once we'd seen the interior of the house, we popped across the courtyard to hit the restaurant, where we got some tea, scones, jam and clotted cream. We totally had our pinkies up the entire time. We likewise went through the old kitchens and checked out the gift shop. Despite a fierce wind and a light mist, we decided to check out some of the grounds. We soon regretted this decision as the rain just got heavier and heavier, while we stood under a big tree next to a 'natural-looking but too conveniently located to ever actually be natural pond'. We saw some serious walkers, the types with special hats and a walking stick in each hand, who probably enjoy walking in the rain best of all as it keeps the pretenders away. Once the rain let up a little we walked back to the car, as the overhead skies guaranteed that there was more rain on the way.

So that was Petworth House! I would definitely recommend a visit! However, it's of course conveniently located nowhere near a train station so you'll have to drive...