The only reason I'd heard of this place was that the last round of the Red Bull Air Race was meant to be held here (the main race day was canned due to bad weather). The pilots who complete in these air races are dead set loonies; if you ever see it advertised on the box, take a look and be amazed.
Anyhow, a quick look through the Lonely Planet convinced us we should stop and take a peak.
Longleat is the home of the Lord Bath, a supposedly colourful peer about Wessex. I don't know terribly much about him, but apparently he is well known around these parts. It is a sixteenth century stately home set in 900 acres of parkland, and is regarded as one of the finest examples of Elizabethan architecture in Britain. The parkland was designed by Capability Brown (who may have been the inspiration for Bloody Stupid Johnson from the Discworld series, at least according to Wikipedia)
Here is a panorama taken from a gentle hill looking down into the valley to the house. Like all the images in the blog, click the image for a bigger version.
The house itself is simply magnificent inside, and you have to take a look if you ever happen to the area. The rooms are frozen in time, and you can really feel the centuries. And the money.
There is simply oodles of trivia about this place. Unfortunately most of it came from the excellent tour guide and was verbal (there isn't much on the web unfortunately). So, you'll have to rely on my questionable memory.
Soon after the house was completed, Queen Elizabeth wanted to visit. The owner of the house (I think it was the original Sir John Thynne) didn't much want her to visit - it cost a fortune to host a Monarch and their enormous entourages. So he kept making excuses - the house wasn't ready, there was a terrible illness etc. But eventually she turned up anyway, and enjoyed herself. It cost a bucket.
We were told that it was quite common for monarchs, when money was a little low, to run off to extended holidays at stately homes in the countryside - it was much cheaper to leach off the landowners (where the host pays for everything) than to stay at the castles. Freeloaders.
Also, in the great hall there is an ornately carved balcony connected to the suite where royal visitors would stay. This was knocked through the wall at the request of Charles I who was coming to visit, and wanted to keep a lofty eye on his subjects while he was in his rooms. This of course was done, even though Charles was only staying one night.
As for the rest of the estate, it now has mazes, (both garden and mirror), rides, cruises and a safari park. It's a bit over the top and we steered well clear of all of that. But all of it was for a pretty good reason - this was all set up sometime in the last century when the previous Lord Bath inherited the estate from his father. The laws on inheritances had just changed, and the new Lord Bath was faced with an inheritance tax bill equivalent to 18 million pounds. Sheesh. Instead of selling up, as he would have otherwise needed to do, he instead opened the house to paying visitors to help recoup the costs. After that came the Safari Park and the rest of it.
For what it's worth, all the attractions seem to be very popular, even at 10am on a cold wet Sunday morning outside of school holidays.
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