No running on the rushes!

This is the long room (gallery?) on the top floor of Montacute House,  a National Trust property in Somerset.  The rush matting on the floor represents the way the flooring was covered in original use.  Poorer households might have laid rushes unwoven, changing them as they grew dirty.  That window is an oriel window, beautiful on the outside, hanging on the external wall, as it were.

It is a fascinating place, considering its age (built in about 1598, according to Wikipedia) and the Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits installed in a couple of the rooms.  Its condition is also remarkable, again considering its age, and the surroundings beautiful.

I like it as well as it was not built on the proceeds of nefarious activity, it seems; the family that owned it had to give it up because one of their number went mad and gambled away the family's fortunes.  The house and immediate surrounds were up for sale as scrap in the 1960s, but a member of the Thomas Cook family bought it as a bequest for preservation and it came to the NT in 1931.

The house from the east is in the Extra.  I'm getting close to the end of my Extras, so any extra photos are in my Google Photos album.  I did have a SmugMug album, but SM's subscriptions were increasing rather too much for my wallet, so I've gone the Flickr route with my Blipfoto images on Google Photos.