WATCH OUT!!!

There's LIONS in England! Eek!

We spent the day at Longleat exploring the safari park, exhibitions and house. It was quite a novelty to drive through the safari bit and have lions and tigers stroll casually past the car, and monkeys bounce around on it. Overall I did enjoy it, but came away with some reservations.

It was a little strange - I wonder if people in 300 years will shake their heads sadly at this kind of amusement, like we do when discussing the old practices of ducking witches (maybe a little extreme, but I couldn't think of a better example, you get the idea). To drive through the monkey enclosure with a car full of kids talking about how the monkeys will vandalise the car this time might be seen as counter-productive for raising law-abiding children - is it legitimising vandalism in certain circumstances?

The grounds immediately around the house are dedicated to various animal enclosures and displays, with lots for kids of all ages to do and see, and some interesting animals. I assume the whole place is good to the animals - the keepers certainly seem fond of their charges, and there were a few old animals who have essentially retired there to do as they wish.

I like seeing how old houses are modernised to fund running costs, the entrepreneurial approaches taken, and Longleat's solution has certainly been quite enterprising. By all accounts the owners are fairly eccentric, so perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that they've allowed so much area to be taken over by visitor attractions. As a landscape historian, however, it is hard to know what to think about this - I love these old estates and houses for their longevity and history, but so much of that seems to have been overwritten and destroyed by this venture. The house is still open for visitors, and I imagine a lot of people visit only the house and get a good stately home experience, but to my mind it cannot be possible to get a feel for a house without seeing it in its surrounding context. Longleat comprises so many disparate features it feels utterly discordant to view any part of it in context with any other part, and each section must be viewed individually.

A lot of this is probably due to my analytical historian brain and I need to just switch that off and enjoy each part of Longleat individually. And I did enjoy it, it was fun to feed the seals, watch the zebras, admire the owls and laugh at the chipmunks. A small part of me just found the location a little jarring.