Buscot House Visit in the Easter hols

 Behind as ever with the blog posts, I couldn't resist including a post on  the fabulous Buscot House and park. It's a great place to visit if you love gardens, with a fabulous water garden designed by Harold Peto for the 1st Lord Faringdon at the beginning of the twentieth century, a lake and lots more. When I visited with my daughter and grandson in the Easter holidays, the tulips were at their peak; they will have gone over by now, but something magnificent will have taken it's place in the well managed gardens. There's also a lovely tea room with huge murals decorating the walls and really good plant sales. 

Couldn't resist taking photos of the tulips

Seriously interesting colours

The statues and long vistas are a feature of the park, here I've photographed the pool with a classical statue by Frank Forster

I hadn't seen this sycamore sculpture before, it's in the Swinging Garden and was apparently made by David Watkinson for Lord Faringdon, it's called Kinetic Piece

The grounds are a haven for wildlife with more birds breeding in a square kilometre of grounds than anywhere else in the country except the Kennet Valley in Berkshire according to the British Trust for Ornithology in 2002. So it seemed fitting that the first mating ladybirds were seen on a bench

I rather liked this arrangement of an urn on a plinth with trained bushes around it.

Below is the famous Dolphin and Putti bronze fountain in the Peto Water Garden

At the north side of the house, there's a pool with a small frog fountain

and also this bronze statue of Mercury added by the present Lord Faringdon

This is one of the paintings on the vaulting of the archway leading to the outdoor swimming pool. Painted by John Hastings in the late 1930s, they depict local farming scenes

In the tea room converted from a stable block, there are more recent frescos painted in 1991-4 by Ellen-Ann Hopkins, they evoke the Renaissance style of Veronese, who covered the walls of Villa Barbaro with amusing portraits of the owner and his family. These depict members of Lord Faringdon's family as they were 30 years ago

As you can see they form a great accompaniment to afternoon teas.

I haven't included any pictures of us, but you can just see Alex's profile in the bottom left of this photo.

We didn't visit the house on this occasion, but the artworks are definitely worth looking at including the Burne Jones Legend of the Briar Rose series of 14 paintings in the Saloon, the Pre-Raphaelite Room, the Ravilious painting of Buscot House to name a few.