Ham House and Strawberry Hill House

It was quite a dull and chilly day for our outing to Ham House and Strawberry Hill House. Our first stop was Ham House, which I had visited several years ago. Situated on the banks of the River Thames, the house was leased by William Murray from King Charles I in 1626. William, and later his daughter Elizabeth transformed the property. The property survived the English Civil War and Parliamentary rule and was home to Elizabeth's descendants for almost three centuries. Today the house is a rare example of one of the great Stuart houses. The formal gardens are superbly laid out with a woodland wilderness, planned borders, kitchen garden, and a recently restored Cherry Garden, formally laid out with clipped box cones, and ball-clipped lavender.

The front of Ham House - notice the curved wall with niches containing busts of Greek gods

The Cherry Garden - used to have cherry trees, but after restoring to original plan with the clipped box and lavender, now has cherry trees aroundthe edge of the garden

Viewfrom the Wild Garden - there is a famous painting of this view of Ham House.

This huge lawn would originally have been close cut by gardeners using scythes.

A very old tree - not sure what it is.

View of the Cherry Garden from upstairs window.

I don't know where these stairs led to - obviously servants stairs

Dining room

View from upstairs in theh ouse to where I took the photo of the back of the house from the Wild Garden

Old leather Fire Buckets

After lunch at Ham Houe, we boarded our coach to drive the fairly short journey to Strawberry Hill House, where we had a private tour of the house. Created by Horace Walpole, writer and politician, in the 18th Century, the house is Britain's finest example of Georgian Gothic revival architecture and is home to an important collection of paintings and objects. The gothic 'plasterwork' you see is in fact all carved wood. This house also was on the bank of the River Thames, but the view is now obscured by trees and houses.

This is the back of the house. I wanted to photograph the front with its round turret, but we were whisked away on our private tour, and when we came out it was pouring with rain so had to make a dash for the coach.

This unusual silk-padded ceiling is the only known one - on either side are machine-embroidered panels - apparently the first known pieces of machine embroidery - see photo below.

The paintings a copy of the original painting which hung in this room. The very intricate wooden frame
is in fact 3D printed in America from photographs of the original. Apparently it even shows the carving marks that were on the original.

One of the bookcase in the library.

All the stained glass windows have different panels. They were brought back from Italy as a job lot of odds and ends. There must have been cases and cases of them as there are stained glass windows in every room.