Forty years ago, as children,  we used to visit this splendid Hall to picnic for long summer days with my parents friends and their children,  but I was never allowed to visit the big house.  I don’t know why, I always wanted to but no one would fork out the money, even though I asked and asked and asked – my parents are so not stately home type visitors, so when I saw the adverts for the free weekend, Hubby had no chance, we were going!

We went on the Sunday and got there early, after hearing the horror stories of just how busy they were on the Saturday, I was determined to get in.  As it was we sat in the car park for an hour waiting for it to open.

Of course rain stopped play, cold rain sweeping in from the fields is not my idea of the best way to spend a spring afternoon, but we did have a wonderful couple of hours and I will be going back to spend a glorious day in the summer tramping around, visiting old haunts of where we played as children.  But until that day, I’ll just leave you with a few photos of the house.