We were back on the National Trust property hunt for the third day of our Cambridge birthday getaway. Wandering around Cambridge itself hadn't thrown up anything that would particularly suit a party of 11 with 3 boys under 4 years old so we resorted to our tried and tested theory that a National Trust garden works for everyone.
Anglesey Abbey did not disappoint - what a beautiful garden it has!! It is simply stunning, and enormous. You almost felt like you were walking into different gardens each time as different walkways had different sort of themes to them. Our first area was quite windy (as in winding around not windy like the weather) and the path kept disappearing in different directions around corners, the Daffodils were wonderful and there were amazing Silver Birch trees.
But this copse of trees - I have never seen anything like it! And the photos do not do it justice. The bright purples, vivid greens and light blues were incredible against the pale silvery bark of the Birches. What amazing underplanting this was! Amazingly I managed to get photos without lots of people standing in the background (we were there fairly early) but it was possibly one of the most pictured parts I saw, everyone was gasping as they came around the last bend and saw this in front of them. I really must try and get this down into a Stitchscape somehow.
Such delicate little Tulips - I think they were some kind of dwarf variety if I remember correctly so they were really quite short and diddy.
Round another bend and this was equally beautiful and perhaps even more delicate! The colour of these flowers (I can't remember what they're called, some kind of Anemone maybe?) is sort of a light lilac/blue but they shone like stars on the floor of the little wood.
The Lode Mill I believe is a functioning corn mill, having been restored to good condition by Lord Fairhaven in 1936, then restored into full working order by the Cambridgeshire Wind & Watermill Society (who knew there was such a thing?) in 1978/82. It wasn't working when we visited as I think it's under restoration again but it's always impressive to see the inner workings of mills. More interestingly for me, it seemed that the areas of the garden around it had been planted with white flowering plants so, combined with the white wood exterior of the mill, it was a wonderfully soothing and calming area to walk through just with a white and green colour scheme. I don't know if that was intentional but I was rather struck with it and the way the mill then blended so peacefully into the garden landscape.
The Abbey itself is a very fine building, and again there are rooms open to walk through - although the upstairs wasn't available when we went as they were working on the bedrooms. It's quite a dark and almost moody or mysterious one with lots of dark heavy furniture and stone walls. I'm not sure Jacobean is my favourite style, but I thought this floral trellis decoration was really interesting! Remarkably fine details to the flowers and a lot of work in the twisty metal bits (technical term).
In contrast to the much wilder, more free flowing gardens further away from the house, the ornate gardens close to the building were very rigid, with tight little square boxes for the plants to grow in and rigid topiary hedges.
We'd just missed a would-have-been-spectacular Hyacinth garden as the flowers had all gone over but I can see that it would have been amazing if we'd only been a week earlier (what it looked like when we went is shown in the last image). I often wonder how close to what the gardens looked like in the building's hey day they are now, would those who lived there recognise the garden as theirs? What would they think if they saw it now? Would they approve? Possibly not with all of us wandering around out there!
Heading back toward the cafe and the exit, we decided to picnic on one of the wide areas of lawn (not the posh clipped lawns, this was a wild one) and the boys shuffled or ran around with other kids all doing the same thing. The sun was out and it was just really nice to see them playing together outside. We would definitely recommend Anglesey Abbey to anyone passing through Cambridgeshire.
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