Month: October 2011

National Trust.
The house dates from the 1630’s, but was largely rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1881. Only the Jacobean gatehouse and the north wing survived. The Jacobean-styled house in silver-grey granite extends around three sides of a courtyard and contained every Victorian convenience except gas and electricity, which the owner found too hazardous. Inside, the newer and restored interiors contain interesting portraits and furniture, and a complete set of Victorian domestic paraphenalia in the service rooms. The old North wing has a 116-foot gallery with a barrel ceiling covered with remarkable 17th century plasterwork. Male and female servants had separate quarters. A large informal garden covers the steep slopes above the house.
The house makes an interesting visit, as the fine rooms and bedrooms are deeply elegant, while the numerous rooms devoted to nurseries, kitchens and servants quarters give an insight into Victorian life ‘below stairs’. I don’t recall the gardens, but the day was rather damp. For the able- bodied, there is a 600-yard walk between car park and house.

National Trust.
The house, perched on a rock off the Cornish coast, is a strange hybrid of monastery, fortress, and elegant country house. A Benedictine priory was established here in the twelfth century, and a fourteenth-century church survives. The site was later converted into a fortress armed with cannon, and was key in the defences against the Spanish Armada in 1588. It was ocupied by Royalists during the Civil War, before surrendering in 1646 to a Parliamentarian whose family have occupied it ever since. Inside are Georgian interiors, some rare plasterwork, and fine Chippendale furniture. Outside, there is a terraced rock garden below the house, and an eighteenth-century walled garden.
Approaching the house is, to say the least, unusual. At low tide you can walk across the causeway, while at high tide small boats ferry visitors across to a little harbour on the landward side of the Mount. One then has to negotiate a steep cobbled path up through the gardens to the house entrance a long way above.
The house with its varied architecture is interesting, and the contents are worth seeing. There are also fine sea views, and there is more to see in the gardens and around the harbour. Altogether a visit to St Michael’s Mount is not to be missed if you are in the area.

National Trust.
Buckland Abbey was bought by Sir Francis Drake after his triumphant return from his circumnavigation of the globe in 1580. He was able to purchase a house that had recently been converted from the abbey church by his rival Sir Richard Greville. The house contains many mementoes of Drake, while its fabric contains many relics of the thirteenth-century abbey church in the form of its crossing tower, blocked arches and traces of monastic windows, and inside, the tracery of the chancel arch. The house has Georgian alterations, and the only complete interior surviving from early times is the sixteenth-century great hall. This is warmly panelled in oak, with an elaborate ceiling, box frieze, and relics of Grenville’s retirement to Buckland. In the upper part of the house, rooms of no architectural interest contain displays.

The interior and the Drake relics are interesting. Outside is a great monastic barn, built about 1300, and one of the largest in Britain. To my mind this is a more satisfying piece of architecture than the mongrel church conversion. Also to be seen are a little herb garden, and a re-created Elizabethan garden, and the wider estate.
As the crow flies, Buckland is quite close to Cotehele (NT), but if you are planning to do both in one day, be cautioned that they are not so close via the local roads!