Back in 2007 I’d not very long had my first proper camera and was keen to head off to places of interest to take photos, and National Trust properties featured highly as we’ve got a fair number within easy driving distance. Of course, back in 2007 I also didn’t really have a clue what I was doing with my camera so automatic settings were the norm, the flash would often pop up and offset the shutter speed horribly, I’d frequently leave the aperture wide open and not focus on the right thing, and photo processing after the event was nowhere near as advanced as it is now.
Yes, those are the excuses for the photos to come, which aren’t too bad, all things considered, but you should see the ones I rejected.
When we visited Clandon Park in 2007 it’s my recollection that photography wasn’t permitted inside the house, hence no pictures. That was pretty typical of all National Trust houses we visited back then although in subsequent years this restriction seems to have been sensibly lifted, likely in line with a reduction in people buying postcards of the rooms and the rise of social media with its free publicity opportunities.
From 2015 onwards you also wouldn’t have been able to take pictures in the house on account of the fire that gutted it, but there is work underway to restore some of it to its former glory so access will be granted again at some point in the future.
Let’s take a look at the photos I did take then of Clandon Park gardens.
We started with a look around the Hinemihi, a Maori whare, which probably doesn’t mean much to you given the low number of Maori readers of this site. A whare is a type of meeting house and this one resided in the village of Te Wairoa close to Mount Tarawera, a volcano on New Zealand’s North Island that erupted in 1886.
The whare had been built in Te Wairoa largely as a tourist experience, letting visitors to the area experience Maori culture, and the name Hinemihi was that of a sixteenth century chief known for her large pet lizard Kataore. The whare was built by locals but used a mixture of traditional and European influences in its construction making it unique in style. That most likely saved it. The resulting weight of ash from the volcanic eruption that covered the village collapsed all but a couple of buildings, with Hinemihi being one of those still standing, providing shelter to a large number of people.
In 1892 the 4th Earl of Onslow was nearing the end of his New Zealand governorship and bought the whare to have it shipped back to the family home in Clandon Park, and it is one of only a few such buildings to exist outside New Zealand.
The house we definitely looked inside even without photographic proof was largely rebuilt in the early part of the eighteenth century in the Palladian style – a very familiar type of architectural design for many National Trust properties around the country – and replaced an earlier Elizabethan mansion.
The surrounding gardens owe some of their style to well-known landscape designer Capability Brown and consisted of the formal areas and large vistas to the surrounding countryside and occasional stone sculptures you’d expect from any property of this type.
The gardens had been more-or-less untouched from their earliest layout until Brown was approached to make changes in 1781. Many formal areas further from the house were removed in favour of more open parkland, a pleasure garden was created, and a canal through the landscape was converted to a lake. Little then changed for nearly a hundred years until some of Brown’s changes were themselves removed, replacing the pleasure garden with lawn, adding in walking paths, removing some trees for views, and planting new ones to hide some aspects.
Following the return of the 4th Earl from New Zealand with his Maori meeting house in the late part of the nineteenth century there was another set of sweeping changes in Clandon Park’s gardens with more cultivation taking place and plenty of influences from home and abroad introduced along with some more informal touches embracing a more naturalistic approach. Other alterations took place after this period, including during World War II when much of the ground was given over to growing food for the war effort (the Dig For Victory campaign), but when the National Trust took over ownership of Clandon Park it was to the 4th Earl’s period that they largely tried to return the look of the land.
One thing I clearly liked from our visit to Clandon Park was the hole in the wall with views into the formal garden with quite a few shots of it, a couple of which you can see below.
Clandon Park is in Surrey and it’s worth keeping an eye on the National Trust Clandon Park web page before thinking about visiting due to ongoing restoration work at the time of writing.