The weather was wonderful, but Paul wanted to have nothing to do with the Olympics so we had a couple of days out instead.
We decided to visit Standen, an Arts and Crafts family home built in 1892 for a wealthy London solicitor called James Beale. It was designed by the architect Phillip Webb and decorated with William Morris wallpapers, carpets and fabrics and William de Morgan ceramics. We used the map reference supplied by the link from the National Trust site to Google maps, but to our dismay, found ourselves driving down smaller and smaller roads until finally it was only a farm track!
We did eventually end up in a farmyard, so we hastily backtracked and this time I supplied Google maps with the postcode, and we found we were not far away, but at the opposite side of a hill.
With the correct reference, we were soon able to make our way there. We had been before some 9 or 10 years ago, but Paul had totally forgotten it, so it was all new to him. The house is on a steep hillside, and partly connected to an old farmhouse which belonged to one of the three farms bought to form the estate. It is quite hard to photograph, the hillside being steep and the house large. It is hard to get far enough away to photograph it until you are quite far down the hill. This is the best I could do, and shows part of the back of the house, taken from the garden.
Like all of these places, it is also difficult to take photographs inside; no flash is allowed, and the best pieces are protected by having the curtains closed, so a lot of the pictures I took were sadly blurred. This is one of the wonderful plain fireplaces, which also has some nice ceramics on the mantelpiece.
I liked this bedroom, with its William Morris paper, nice antique chest of drawers and its very early built-in wardrobe.
Anyone who has read previous entries in this blog will recall my interest in the bathing facilities of all the houses I visit; this is one adjacent to one of the bedrooms.
Of course, the other facility I can never resist is the loo. This is quite a modern looking one, I think. I can certainly recall using some very similar ones as a child in Kenya in the 1940s and 1950s.
Another place I can never resist is the kitchen, which in this case is not particularly large. It has quite a modern-looking range along one wall - you may be able to see in at the back of my picture, though it has come out a little dark.
Afterwards, we went for a walk in the gardens, which are quite extensive. This was something we failed to do on our last visit, as it was raining at the time! Paul did a good deal more running about than I did; as it was a very hot day, I soon found a cool summer house to relax in and just look out over the lower garden.
We always seem to end up staying at these places until closing time, and this was no exception. Closing time in this case came before I had fully made up my mind to buy a cushion in a William Morris pattern that matches my bedroom curtains. Paul doesn't approve of such purchases, so he was delighted!
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