Witley Court and Gardens is a Jacobean house that burnt down in 1937. What's left is the shell of the house and some amazing gardens that have only recently been restored. I decided to go as i was bored with my usual day out, shopping or going to the cinema, so a friend and I decided to inject a little culture in to our lives by visiting an English Heritage site. We decided on Witley Court as it was close to where we live and I had always wanted to visit as you can see it in the distance on the drive to Worcester.
So we travelled the ten odd miles down winding repetitive roads, up the driveway and parked right in front of the gift shop along with the other five or so cars.
Coming out of the gift shop we headed in the general direction of the court. Finding the court wasn’t so difficult but the gate you had to open to get up to it was another matter! It wasn’t just a simple bolt or latch and in the end we just gave up and climbed over… lucky it was so quiet else we would have felt absolutely ridiculous! (Not that we didn’t already…)
At the foot of the house we were given audio headsets. After this point we were pretty much left to roam the house and grounds as we pleased as the headsets gave us information about different sections given on the number we pressed. The house I didn’t find that impressive as although it is a huge space with a lot of history it is mostly just a burnt out shell after the fire that destroyed it in 1937 but the gardens are fantastic.
The gardens were landscaped by one of the leading land designers of the time. William Andrews Nesfield. After the fire the ground fell in to disarray and it is only after a lot of hard work from the English Heritage that it’s finally on the way to becoming what it once was. The focus point in the garden of course, has to be the huge fountain that sits in the centre. The fountain of Perseus and Andromeda, when on, is supposed to be as loud as an express train going past, or so the audio headset told me. I was quite disappointed then that it was switched off for the day though it gave me a great view of the carving.
www.english-heritage.org.uk/server.php?show=nav.16927
Worcestershire - WR6 6JT
01299 896636
Google map: tinyurl.com/yg3flot
Ten miles NW of Worcester on the A443
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