The day after Bank Holiday Monday B wanted to go into Tenbury Wells for bird food and a new saucepan so we returned to the beautiful Burford House Gardens. They always look lovely and the volunteers are to be congratulated and on this visit the gardens seemed to surpass themselves.
Mallard ducklings on one of the pools.
Rosie from Corners of My Mind blog has very kindly done some research for me into my paternal grandmother's parents who lived in Burford. Censuses reveal the names of several cottages where they resided which I suspect may be difficult to find as there are no street names given. In addition some older areas of Burford seem to have been demolished to make way for 1950's/60's housing and recent new builds :( But one day I will go a walk round the village and see if I can find any of the cottages. The census also revealed that my great grandfather was a coachman and my grandmother for a time laundress for Burford House. So going there has become even more special for me. Thanks so much again Rosie.
I talked about the history of the house in my last blog post on the gardens so I won't repeat it all again. But when my great grandmother (and possibly great grandfather if he was their coachman) worked for them the owner (from 1860) was George Rushout, 3rd Baron Northwick, a descendent of the Bowles family who bought the estate in 1720. The estate was bought in 1954 by John Treasure who changed the gardens and opened them to the public in 1958.
This is a bed for pollinators and will look lovely in a few weeks.
We looked for Kingfishers on the river without success but we did later see a Dipper on the Ledwyche Brook.
A very record shot of a Beautiful Demoiselle - it was just perched too high to get a decent photo.
As we were leaving I went back into the first part of the garden to see the alliums again and spotted that the gate leading over the bridge which crosses the brook which is usually locked was actually open. So who can resist a Meadow - I certainly can't!!!! I'll show you the lovely meadow and its flowers in the next post.
All photos taken by me with the Panasonic Lumix FZ330 bridge camera (I don't particularly rate my photos but if anyone wishes to use one I would be grateful for an email first - thanks).
