Owlpen Manor

One of the real delights of living in England is the visiting of old houses, gardens and churches. Most people do this as members of The National Trust. This organization has houses, protected country side and gardens spread all over the land. In addition there are many privately owned houses that open to the public occasionally and of course there are Garden Open Days when hundreds of gardens open for charity.

Recently I decided to go to a museum to look at some Arts and Crafts furniture. At the last moment I discovered, on the internet, that Owlpen Manor was open and that it would be closed to visitors at the end of September. The decision was therefore made to journey to Gloucestershire to see the place described by Vita Sackville-West as “that tiny grey manor-house cowering amongst its enormous yews”.

Owlpen is not on a very beaten track. Travelling alone I managed to take a couple of wrong turnings, though I did feel that the signpost in Tetbury was deliberately misleading. After pulling into a few gateways to read the map, and inconveniencing several motorists by driving slowly looking for clues I saw the sign – OWLPEN, NOT SUITABLE FOR COMMERCIAL VEHICLES – though inexperienced in the guidance of commercial vehicles I’m sure that it was sound advice. The road was very narrow, winding and dropped down a steep hill between high, overgrown banks. Luckily there were no other vehicles proceeding in the opposite direction for the discussion over which one had right of way would have been lengthy. (As the suppleness of youth is gradually lost I find reversing more demanding as looking backwards over a shoulder becomes more difficult, perhaps Panderjam should start road testing cars from the viewpoint of the older driver.) Emerging from the confines of the banks near the bottom of the valley the manor house appears.

This has been described as the most beautiful place in England, and it can certainly stake a claim to that title. The house looks South from the North slope of a steep valley, just behind is a small church and woods cover the tops of the hills both before and behind. Emerging from the car the first sensation is one of almost complete silence, then you begin to absorb the tranquillity.

The house itself is old, many gabled, and irregular, the result of changes over hundreds of years, the sort of place that one of Drake’s captains could have dreamed of while counting the proceeds of piracy – and you can imagine him still striding about in the hall. It is not huge. It is not a museum. The family still live there and it is furnished for them and not to fulfil the ideas of an interior decorator. The formal gardens are terraced down to the South.

After pottering about I had tea outside the Cyder House in the company of a gentle Ridgeback dog, whose pleas for generously iced carrot cake were rejected. Then drove quietly home, very thankful that these islands of deep England still exist.

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