Our guide to Chavenage House

We made a decision before Helena went to work this morning that we would go for a jaunt this afternoon and continue our visits to historic houses. We chose Chavenage House which we have driven past in years gone by and enjoyed the landscape in which it rests, not many miles away from our home. It is only open to visitors on Thursdays and Sundays in the summer months, so we knew we had to get there before too long.

We drove south out of Nailsworth onto the tops of the Cotswold escarpment where there is rolling open countryside interspersed with stone walls and small patches of woodland. I have always been intrigued by Chavenage because it lies at the centre of the old Longtree Hundred, the ancient division of local areas since Norman times. What I want to do is eventually find the 'Longtree' because that was where the old councils would meet to make their decisions and uphold the law. Stroud is set in the adjacent Bisley Hundred, where traditionally the council's meeting place was at the Wittantree, and there is still a Wittantree farm next to the farm shop I regularly visit (and blip from).

On arrival at about 2pm today we discovered a film crew were using the big house, but it turned out that the guided tours were still running. The daughter of the owner welcomed us as when she found us wandering about the grounds uncertainly, and we found that a tour had just begun although it was limited to the areas of the house that the film crew weren't using. She took us up to the old bedrooms to join the tour and there we were able to stand with about thirty others and listen to her father, David Lowsley-Williams, regale us with wonderfully entertaining anecdotes about his life and the history of the house.

I am hoping Helena will recount (she has now!) some of that because she has a much better memory than I do. All I will say now is that David is pictured here sitting beside the bed in Cromwell's Room, as the sign above the door says, whilst I stood in the doorway listening. You can see that the room's walls are completely covered by this thick hanging tapestry, as is the room next door called Ireton's Room. Around the room are objects including pictures, 17th century swords, massive hats, wonderful old wooden furniture and candlesticks.

David brought it all to life, and continued to do so in all the other rooms we then went to see. I will add some more pictures later to a Flickr gallery, but they are all rather grainy because there was little illumination.

We have decided that we will return for the tour another time, not only to hear David 's tales, which I expect may all be new ones, but to see the rest of the house where the period costume drama is being filmed. It is used regularly for filming some of which is noted on the wiki site about Chavenage House.


Chavenage House