Chartwell

Some time ago now we visited the lovely Chartwell house and gardens. It's the former home of Sir Winston Churchill and his family and is now in the care of the National Trust. I've been meaning to post about it for ages but sadly my blog takes a back seat when things get busy and I've never gotten around to writing information about it to go with my photos. 

We had visited with a friend and luckily enough it was a beautiful Spring day! Not too cold or windy and nice and sunny which was ideal. Baby F could toddle around, although if it were up to him he would just keep going and we would never stop and look at anything. Occasionally though he suddenly stops and you find yourself falling over him in a tangle.

I find the inside of the house slightly strange. With other National Trust properties you expect huge ornate rooms with disapproving ancestors frowning at you down their noses from copious oil paintings hanging on the walls, fading silk wallpaper and fantastically ornate moulded ceilings. Whilst Chartwell is still very grand it is also quite modern looking, not ostentatious at all really and for some reason it stands out in my mind for that. 

With a toddler on the loose there wasn't a lot of standing and reading the room material and we whistled through the rooms searching out the different animals on the Easter trail (he especially enjoyed the stairs) and back out into the garden for an emergency snack. 

The time of year gives the garden the feeling of things awakening. There were lots of bare branches but also still some new shiny colours coming through, leaf buds in a zesty green, tentatively uncurling ferns which always remind me exactly of pistil stitches (french knots on their own sticks), and beautiful red and pink Camelias throwing browning flowers at the people walking underneath. 

The Magnolias have also been especially nice this year - sometimes they can be a bit patchy if it frosts too harshly after they've flowered but I think they've been ok. 

We walked down to Churchill's art studio (which is more than four times the size of my flat - just for him to store his paintings!) and had a chat with the very friendly volunteer who was clicking us in. Personally I don't find all of Churchill's paintings that good, or of interesting subject matter but to be fair we had walked into his private space - perhaps he felt the same way about some of his paintings, I certainly have some pieces of mine stored away that I don't like all that much. I would dearly love to have an area even half the size of his to house my Stitchscapes and store all of my materials in though. 

It's a lovely place to visit if you are in the area. My family collect the fabric patches that the National Trust now sell for their properties so we remembered to collect our badges before we left so that I can stitch them onto our camp blankets - at some point in the distant future.