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Hestercombe is the remnant of an estate near Taunton in Somerset which has existed for over seven hundred years. I won’t go into too much of its history (though you can find more on their website, linked below) but I have a personal connection with the place.
I had a friend at primary school who lived in a house hidden among the woods above the property. At the time, the estate had seen better days. After the Second World War, it came into the ownership of the Crown Estate (later being sold to the local council), and it was used as the headquarters of Somerset Fire Brigade for sixty years.
The control room was here, and there were a variety of training facilities, some housed in absurdly out of place sixties buildings.
But my friend and I spent many happy days roaming through what had once been spectacular gardens. There were overgrown paths, forgotten follies, rusting machinery, and silted up water-courses. For two boys of eight or nine, it was close to heaven.
But the days of councils owning such properties were coming to an end. They were unsuited to their always-limited purpose, expensive to maintain, and far too expensive to repurpose. The gardens were handed over to a charitable trust, who spent many years gradually uncovering and renovating them.
Their original creation is spread over nearly three hundred years, from a fine landscape garden, to a formal garden which is probably the best example of the collaboration between Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.
The trust finally bought the freehold to the house and garden from the council in 2013 for the grand sum of £1. In truth it is an unremarkable building. One of hundreds of similar country houses which dotted the landscape. Grand enough from the front to impress visitors, but look at the side views, and it isn’t nearly as impressive.
The side overlooking the formal garden appears to be a random layout of odd windows and doors. Even given its mixed recent history, it’s not exactly an artistic facade! But such houses were built largely as comfortable family homes, and made no pretence to match the grandeur of the more famous ‘stately homes’.
The trust has now opened parts of the house as a gift shop, book shop, and art gallery space which covers most of the first floor. I hope they will consider opening more, though I guess much of the property has a fairly utilitarian feel, and renovating it will be costly.
But the reason to visit Hestercombe is the garden. You could spend most of a day wandering around, and there is a restaurant whose menu sounds good, but it unfortunately closed early on the day of my visit, and I wasn’t able to sample it.
Thinking back all those years to my younger self, I will admit I struggled to match my memories to the present site. But it’s not surprising. Much has changed; utility buildings have gone, new ones have appeared. And the gardens have been restored to their former glory. It’s well worth a visit.
There are more pictures on my ‘Image Galleries‘ page.
For more information, visit Hestercombe’s website.
