Wednesday, 16 March 2011

A Day off

Yesterday we took a day off from kitchen watching and went out. We first visited a large village/small town called Bruton. A very pretty place, which has kept much of its mediaeval architecture. We had coffee - well in my case a smoothie - at a cafe which is in a converted chapel; it looks very modern inside, though they have kept much of the chapel in tact, the balcony area being used as an art gallery.

Click to play this Smilebox slideshow



After strolling around Bruton we went to Stourhead, a house and garden owned by the National Trust. We didn't have time to look at the gardens, but will do that another time. The house was built in about 1740 for a wealthy banking family, as their holiday home (some holiday home) in the Palladian style which was popular then.

Click to play this Smilebox slideshow

I wasn't able to take many photographs inside the house because they have to keep the rooms so dark and although I could use my camera I wasn't allowed to use flash.

When we got home we found that David the fitter had done a great deal of carpentry work and plumbing, but it didn't look greatly different to bother taking a photograph. I'll take one this evening though.

8 comments:

jabblog said...

What a lovely day out you had. I enjoyed your slide shows and was most interested by the granary.

Amelia said...

Looks like a very interesting day trip. I love the old buildings...grass and flowers are so pretty.

Lynn said...

Thanks for taking us sightseeing with you. I loved the house tour, can you imagine having a library like that at your disposal? I wonder what the original church goers would think that their chapel is restaurant? Beautiful architecture.

Kay said...

A holiday home? Can you imagine what their regular home must have been like? These are all spectacular photos, Amanda. I really love the electric car photo. I wish we had one here.

Julie said...

I love the slide shows. I would so like to come to England someday and see a bit of my heritage. Thanks for sharing.

Candace said...

What a nice day trip you had, and Stourhead is such a quaint little vacation home (lol). It's hard to imagine being so wealthy.

Anita said...

Very nice pictures Amanda. I wish spring would decide to arrive here. We have sunshine and low 40 degree temps but have another storm system expected by tomorrow night. So we get a tease now and again, but so far no steady spring.

Anita said...

What a pretty spring day you had. Hopefully we'll be seeing some of those days soon.