Here is all the fake Jacobean architecture you could want. It's a late-Victorian creation and it fooled me, a little bit. But if you don't come here for the house and lovely gardens, with some splendid specimen trees if you are in the market for those, then your reward is the astonishing collection of Pre-Raphelite works collected by a later generation of the family in the 1930s.
The place is awash with Burne-Jones, Rosetti, Millais, and Evelyn and William De Morgan. It's hard to know where to look first. Be prepared to take a good long time going around the house and to put up with the usual over-enthusiasm from the volunteers.
Why is it that if you show a longer than average interest in a picture or are actually discussing it with your companion, they take that as an invitation to tell you a whole load of things you already know, and practically run across the room to do so, not caring whether they are intruding into a conversation? Beats me. Annoys me. And it happens all the time. I do wish the National Trust would remind their helpers that they are not the centre of attention and that I don't appreciate someone's arm being thrust an inch from my face.
Bof! On with the art, some of which you have to strain your neck to look at, as it is hung in exactly the place the family had it and given the don't cross this line ropes, it is sometimes out of comfortable eye reach. There is too much to choose from, so I'll take just the one portrait by Millais of Effie Gray with foxgloves. It's easy to miss in a hallway, but it is the important painting that signals their love and her bravery to get away from the cruelty of Ruskin. Fabulous.
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