Not so belated review: Ightham Mote
Apr. 10th, 2007 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pandopOn Sunday we went to Ightham Mote
Fortunately it wasn't as busy as I had feared, considering it was Easter Sunday and the weather was glorious.
Ever since I saw the Time Team special on the restoration of Ightham Mote I have wanted to go here, as it looked like my sort of stately home. I was sadly disappointed with the whole day though, which makes me even more glad we hadn't paid to get in, as if I had paid, I might have been demanding my money back.
Ightham Mote is a lot smaller than it looks on the television, and it didn't take us that long to cover the house and the gardens, less than an hour in fact. Even if we had done the tours available (the timing for the tour of the tower didn't work out for us, which was a shame, as I would have liked to have done that one - there was no way my companion would have been interested in a garden tour, especially not so early in the season when there wasn't a lot to see) we would still have been coming in at less than 2 hours. Not a lot for £8.40/£9.60 with gift aid.
I did like most of the inside of the house (well the panelly bits, the rest was a bit 'late' for my tastes), and I really liked the places where you could see up into the 'innards' of the house, as that is where a lot of the restoration work was done. Another thing I did like was that you were able to walk round several of the rooms, rather than being kept behind a little rope.
The outside of the house is absolutely beautiful though:
I particularly liked the Grade 1 listed kennel - not many properties can boast one of those!
There were the other usual National Trust issues, the restaurant was extoritonately expensive - and as nothing appealed to us, we decided to head for a pub lunch instead (in the village of Ightham, which is also very pretty). The gift shop was also really expensive.
What really soured the experience was the car park. The car park here is very oddly designed in terms of where you can and can't enter/exit, and these are poorly signposted. When we asked for advice on how to get out, the steward was very offhand and unhelpful. Which was a shame, as all the other staff had been very friendly and polite.
Ever since I saw the Time Team special on the restoration of Ightham Mote I have wanted to go here, as it looked like my sort of stately home. I was sadly disappointed with the whole day though, which makes me even more glad we hadn't paid to get in, as if I had paid, I might have been demanding my money back.
Ightham Mote is a lot smaller than it looks on the television, and it didn't take us that long to cover the house and the gardens, less than an hour in fact. Even if we had done the tours available (the timing for the tour of the tower didn't work out for us, which was a shame, as I would have liked to have done that one - there was no way my companion would have been interested in a garden tour, especially not so early in the season when there wasn't a lot to see) we would still have been coming in at less than 2 hours. Not a lot for £8.40/£9.60 with gift aid.
I did like most of the inside of the house (well the panelly bits, the rest was a bit 'late' for my tastes), and I really liked the places where you could see up into the 'innards' of the house, as that is where a lot of the restoration work was done. Another thing I did like was that you were able to walk round several of the rooms, rather than being kept behind a little rope.
The outside of the house is absolutely beautiful though:
I particularly liked the Grade 1 listed kennel - not many properties can boast one of those!
There were the other usual National Trust issues, the restaurant was extoritonately expensive - and as nothing appealed to us, we decided to head for a pub lunch instead (in the village of Ightham, which is also very pretty). The gift shop was also really expensive.
What really soured the experience was the car park. The car park here is very oddly designed in terms of where you can and can't enter/exit, and these are poorly signposted. When we asked for advice on how to get out, the steward was very offhand and unhelpful. Which was a shame, as all the other staff had been very friendly and polite.
