A mock castle built mainly out of granite blocks for a very successful grocer called Drew in the first decades of the last century. So successful that he was able to have his name incorporated in the name of the nearby village, Drewsteignton. Drew's town on the Teign, with his castle overlooking the Teign gorge. The castle is a rather conspicuous & ugly affair, which leaked more or less from the word go, and which the then owners managed to foist on the National Trust in the seventies. National Trust now locked into massive expense to keep the pile in the state intended by its architect, Edwin Lutyens. A state which includes covering the asphalt roof with stone blocks so that the castle would look more authentic from the air - but which makes it very difficult to mend the asphalt. Didn't anyone think to tell Lutyens that castles usually had pitched wooden roofs inside the crenellations?
To my mind all rather silly. It would have been more sensible to cut the whole thing down to a single storey pavilion which could have housed the more interesting contents, the visitor centre and the all important toilets and café. Much less of a blot on the landscape.
Silliness which is compounded for me by huge outlay on tapestry maintenance. I dare say the tapestry is old and important, but why? A tapestry is not like a painting, crucially dependent on the touch of the master himself and for what they have spent on patching up this bit of old junk (I use the word not altogether in jest), I dare say they could have had a first class modern replica, which would actually give you some idea of what tapestries looked liked in their prime, maybe even some idea of why people (such as Louis XIV) spent such huge amounts of money on them. For a similar case of silliness, see reference 1.
Further compounded by trying to liven up the stone rooms with contemporary art works, some of which seemed to be inspired by the detritus series from Dame Trace. See reference 4.
But I did learn a fun new phrase from another husband, 'dwell time'. I had been telling people how long they had spent in a room as they came out (making the times up, of course. For example, 1 minute 23 seconds), and this chap told me that the technical term for how long people spent in a room was dwell time. And that properties like this one would dearly like to have good estimates of dwell time so that they could better allocate their resources. A companion phrase to 'foot fall'. The only downer was that someone in the same party mistook me for a trusty and the best that I could think to say was that I was not old enough. Which was not even true, as one lady trusty had done 27 years in this one building and so must have been younger than I am now when she started. On this day she was rather cold and could have done with one of those Hampton Court Palace greatcoats. See reference 1 again for more information on this point.
Outside, the gardens were very fine. I note in particular the circular croquet lawn, encased in yew, the square formal garden and the various avenues. I dare say the roses in the square formal garden will look very well indeed in the summer. There were also some plants which looked like some sort of mutant bluebell, these being now under investigation.
Outside also we had a spanking new visitor centre, rather like that at Anglesey Abbey (see reference 2). The thing worked well enough but I was disappointed that heritage did not run to properly jointed rafters in the roof and we had to make do with ugly steel plates strapping the things together, for all the world like something you might buy from Persimmon. See illustration above and reference 3.
Maybe the National Trust has the excuse that it is a federal organisation and the HQ has little control over what the south western region might get up to. Maybe the National Trust should not merge with English Heritage (a merger which seems to be on the cards). Maybe we should take a leaf out of Hameron's book and insist on market forces coming into play, with National Trusts 1, 2 and 3 slugging it out.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/parasites.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/two-birds-with-one-stone.html.
Reference 3: http://www.persimmonhomes.com/.
Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/detritus-3.html.
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