Charlecote Park Part One

Charlecote Park is a 16th century country house surrounded by it's own deer park standing on the bank of the river Avon. It has been in the same Lucy family most of that time and Elizabeth 1st stayed there. The National Trust has administered the building since 1946.

My wife surprised me with this visit but I was pleased she did

The entrance gates to Charlecote Park which I'm afraid you don't use, the entrance is through a small gate about 100 meters to the right

 You do get to walk down the drive to the gatehouse though

That takes you through to the main house

Going back to the gatehouse you can see some nice features

Like the coat of arms

 and stonework in the arch as you walk through

Viewing it looking back reminds me of the Tower of London

not far away is the orangery which is now a restaurant where you can get a cup of tea or coffee and cake 

 and get a nice view of the house

 Across the other side of the house you get to the laundry which is through this door

All mod cons for it's time

 See the Boiler on the  left here well I remember my next door neighbor having one like it and doing her washing in it every Monday, mind you that was 50 years ago
On the right is a cheese press, she did not have one of those

Go through a further door and you see the brew house

One of the boiling cauldrons 

 It's the best example I have seen so far

 

 Outside in the stable yard is a hand pump

The stables have now been converted to keep the old coaches in 

These were state of the art in their time and the thing to be seen in

 This is the old stable yard

and not far away is the  Deer Park

 I turned round to get this shot of the house

The deer would have to swim across the Avon here

or try and cross the weir

much simpler to cross the bridge which I might add has a gate which you can go through to walk round the Deer park

I just tried to take a few with my camera

 The duck though I would give it some food but went off dissapointed

Mind you the deer did not seem to want to get much closer either








 

I did manage a few zoomed in shots though

 Couple of Stags

Elegant  looking stag

Thought we would head off and walked past the place they used to get on their horses

Another view of the front. The stables are through the gate over on the right there

These steps lead to the Orangery 

and if you go to the to of the steps you will see this

Go round the back of the hose to see these beautiful layed out gardens

 They are quite something else

so well laid out

and I'm glad to say when we were looking there were few people around

Time to head off as I wanted to visit the nearby church. I did not show any of the inside of the house, as you can see that in Part 2
  For more information and if you would like to visit go to the National Trust Website