Longleat House and Safari Park

Monday, 15th June, after deciding not to go to Stonehenge with the thousands the next choice was Longleat, the home of Lord Bath or the Marquess of Bath, his official title and his Safari Park.  It was close by and we got there by 10 am, the opening time, to find there were also hundreds there as well !!!  As I didn't want to go around the Safari Park and see its lions, cheetahs and tigers, giraffes and rhinos, monkeys and wolves, zebras, vultures and African pigmy goats, I instead settled for exploring the house and gardens.   Debbie and Tessa proceeded to go around the Safari Park by car and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Longleat House, the front of it, from the road coming into the property

The House and 900 acres of land in Wiltshire has been with the same family since the house was built by John Thynn in 1580.  It has been handed down from son to son and Lord Bath, the 7th Marquess of Bath, now 86 years old, his son, the Viscount of Weymouth with his son, only 7 months old, all still live there in the west and north wings of the house.  The House was opened to the public in 1949 by the 6th Marquess of Bath to avoid future inheritance fees (if a historic house is open to the public for more than 100 days a year and a contract is drawn up with the Government, all inheritance fees are waivered).  The Safari Park, the first drive-through Safari park outside Africa, was opened in 1966 by the 6th Marquess as well.

The other side of Longleat House taken down near the Lake with the growing maze in front of it.  The brown grass is the daffodil patch that has just been mown.  They must have looked glorious.

I spent the morning initially on a tour of the downstairs part of Lord Bath's private part of the House where he has his private mural art collection that he has painted and his 1,000 piece private painting collection, called the "Wessex Collection".  Lord Bath is an artist and started the murals in 1948 and they consist of a theme, they are very colourful, cover most of the walls of the hallways, the huge Billiard room and the Disco room. They consist of an oil based painting on a canvas that is then surrounded with a paper mache based mural which is very labour intensive and involves about 11 processes.  Unfortunately I was not able take any photos of this.  It was fascinating to see and very different.

Following this tour, as the east and south wings to the House which are open to the public did not open until the afternoon, I explored the grounds and the gardens.  The grounds were extensive and included a garden with 4 large topiary birds, an adjacent rose garden with an orangery (I was in my element, so many roses) and then behind another hedge, a secret gardens with animals made of twisted wire in the centre of it.

The garden at the back of the House with the 4 topiary birds, only one in the photograph.

The House from the Rose Garden.

The Rose Garden and the Orangery

The Secret Garden with Regency flowers and the animals made from twisted wire.

The grounds covered a lot of the area surrounding the House and before the Safari Park, were in immaculate order and well kept.  On one side of the House a maze was being grown of hedging and beyond that a large lake had been formed, beside the Safari Park and adjacent to the grounds.

The Lake adjacent to the House and the Safari Park

I met up with Debs and Tessa at about 1 pm and we had lunch in the Cellar café under the House and then proceeded to go through the House open to the public.  The House has 150 rooms in all, a lot of them not used or used for storage.  The main ones we visited included the Great Hall which retains many of the original 16th Century features including the fireplace, the elaborate wooden screen and the hammerbeam roof.  It has massive hunting scenes painted by John Wooten hanging on its walls.
It has a balcony and double doors built later for the visit of Charles II so he could look down on the visitors as well as a shuffleboard table, 33 ft long and made in the House and can't be removed as it is.  Photos had to be taken without a flash and Debs was able to get some but not of all the rooms.

The end wall of the great hall with the balcony and double doors made for Charles II visit.

The most impressive rooms apart from the Great Hall was the Breakfast Room, Downstairs Dining Room and the Red Library.  This library had nearly 5,000 books in it.  There were 7 libraries in all, and over 44,000 books, the oldest being around 1577.  As well as antique furniture there were over 500 traditional paintings in many of the rooms, mainly portraits or country scenes or of horses but modern portraits and family photographs were also scattered around in several rooms.

The Downstairs Dining Room.  The Queen dined here for the celebrations of the 400 anniversary of the House.

Upstairs there was the bedroom bathroom, nursery and 2 bedrooms, the Chinese and Prince of Wales bedroom.  More impressive was the main Dining Room with a silver centrepiece weighing 7 and a half stone, the Saloon that is 90 feet long and the State Drawing Room.   The latter has Italian wall coverings made of velvet and to protect these and the delicate furnishings and early panel paintings, also on the ceiling, the windows are sealed off from all light and the room is temperature regulated.  Further on are the Music and Minstrel rooms, the latter sitting in the centre of the house, opening into the Great Hall.  It has a Bechstein Piano, dated 1910 and music from this room can be heard in the Great Hall and the Drawing Room.

The Chinese Bedroom

The final part and the most impressive is the Grand Staircase which was an addition at the beginning of the 19th century replacing a more simpler one.  In the early 1800's corridors on the inside of the House adjacent to the central courtyard, were added for privacy in the rooms and for the servants to use.

The Grand Staircase.  Tessa was moving when the photo was being taken.

 I had a wonderful day there and really enjoyed everything I saw and the history of it.