The Ham Nomads

29 Sep 2014. <GB-ENG> Dyrham, S Glos —

Started the day with about an hour at Macca's, Warren using his computer to Blog, Susie using hers to catch up on her email. We then went up, via a Sainsbury's and a Lidl, to the Trowbridge Odeon in the hope of taking in a movie — but nothing doing till about 3pm! Decided to move on to Dyrham Park, a little east of Bristol, and do some exploration there.

Site of the Battle of Deorham (or Dyrham) between
the West Saxons and the West Country Britons in 577 — yes, another battlefield.
Also the site of an early hillfort, that you can still see in the landscape.

Susie in discussion with Liz

The day had started off rather grey, but at least it wasn't raining. We got to Dyrham Park, had a bite to eat (with Lidl bread rolls - can't recommend Lidl for much, but their bread rolls are second to none!), and then went over to the visitor centre at about 2 o'clock. There was to be a guided Deer Park Walk at 2.15, so we decided to wait around for that. Turned out that we were the only two takers, so Liz (the guide) and we had a lovely walk through the Park, chatting the whole way. Apparently the deer were a little more active today than on some days — perhaps because it was a little grey — and we were able to walk very close to herds of does and fawns, and later on past some of the 'boys' — the bucks. They're very placid, considering they are getting into rutting season! Liz was able to give us a run-down of the history of the estate, including some of the quirks of its early owners. The original garden included, for a large part, a formal Dutch water garden (similar to what we saw at Westbury Court Garden, but on a much grander scale). There was a huge cascade, coming down from a statue of Neptune. William Blathwayt (the builder of Dyrham between 1692 and 1704) took great delight in taking the ladies to the foot of the hill and, when they were in the right place, secretly signalling his gardeners to turn on the cascade. Presumably an early form of the wet T-shirt competition!

Liz left us at the entrance of the house, so we continued inside. Won't go through every room in detail, but let's just say that this was magnificent living at its best. The rooms are superb, although a little dark for our own taste. The family itself were most influential, at least in the early days, with two brothers, George Wynter and Sir William Wynter, financing Drake's world circumnavigation in 1577, and prominent in Drake's defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. William Blathwayt I, who married George's granddaughter Mary, and who moved in the highest political circles, built the house and had the grounds laid out in the early 1700s. One interesting element of the house is the locks on William Blathwayt's private rooms, which are most ornate, and have a key and at least six latches, but moreover, one of the decorative buttons is in fact a secret combination lock — he really was security-conscious! Although Blathwayt had built a house fit for aristocrats, his descendants had less ambitious aspirations, content to live as simple Gloucestershire squires. This is to our benefit, as they made few changes to the house. The other thing their laxity led to was the reversion of most of the formal Dutch garden to typical English Country Garden.

In some ways, this is a loss, in other ways a definite gain — the deer herd is today able to roam the entire estate, and just by walking about you can come to close quarters with them, as we found earlier on. There is a thriving orchard, and a strong colony of bees working in the gardens to the side of the formal water garden in front of the house, whose lake (a remnant of the Dutch water garden) has become the home of a rather splendid juvenile male swan, who should be in peak breeding form next year.

We had a lovely day at Dyrham, and then left to get a little further north, towards Gloucester. We stopped off in a layby just a mile or so north of Bath — a slight slope, but we can cope with that!

Distance driven — today, 17 miles ( 27 km ); to date, 8,105 miles ( 13,044 km )