Montacute House

Day four of tourism in our own neighbourhood and we made our delayed visit to Montacute House. Built between 1588 and 1601 by Sir Edward Phelips, the house was the family home for the next 300 years. House and gardens are substantially as they were in the time of Queen Elizabeth the first (and Shakespeare).

Montacute House

Clare sorts her stuff out

After we had visited the house and gardens we walked around the perimeter in the fields where cattle graze and came upon this sculpture on a felled tree.

The Montacute Owl

Just one parting thought. One of the portraits in the house is of a strikingly modern Elinor Glyn, who died in 1943. I had never heard of her but she's in Wikipedia here, an early writer of women's erotic fiction. She gets to be on the wall by virtue of her long-lasting affair with a late owner of the house, Lord Curzon ... but by all acounts she preferred to be on a bearskin rug.