Carole and I went into the house this visit, we generally confine ourselves to the excellent formal gardens and the grounds; this is a small collage of some of the rooms that are open to the public.
The rooms are, on the whole, as they were when the then owner gave it to the National Trust in 1984 after being crippled with death and inheritance taxes. All of the contents were placed on the lawn (visible in yesterday’s photograph of the house) and auctioned off. Both the National Trust and the British Museum had reserves on much of it, but local inhabitants were also able to buy smaller items. What the NT bought, and some of what the British Museum bought was put back into the house and is visible to today’s visitors.
