With lovely weather forecast for tomorrow, Mothering Sunday coincides with Hartland Abbey opening its gates for the season.  Ironically the daffodils are far better now than they were when we opened for Daffodil Day a couple of weeks ago and the gardens really are looking beautiful.

The primroses are better than ever, confirmed by Monty Don last night on Gardeners World! Delicious smells have been wafting up from the Tea Room kitchen where Jo and Kath have been cooking up some delicious treats for Sunday. Their food has been so good and they received plenty of accolades in their first season last year! So many people and dogs came to Daffodil Day; thank you to everyone for coming even though it clouded over after a beautiful start to the day. It had been a nightmare getting the walks tidied up and safe after the storms but we all pulled together and with lots of bonfires we just managed to be reasonably tidy.

 

 

Nigel has filled the house with some stunning flowers and Carol has the house looking lovely. Thankfully she has been on a very well earned holiday for the last week but will be back in action with the hoover on Monday! She is also the shopkeeper, a job she shares with Liz Hodges. They have to wear many extra layers of clothes to keep warm in the basement but they are always smiling! We are so lucky with our wonderful room stewards and our ‘chaps’ in the Payhut who are so helpful to the visitors. It is always lovely to see them back in one piece after the winter; we so enjoy their company and care that all is well. Behind the scenes Peter and Karen Senior have been cataloguing the Library. It is immensely kind of them both. Karen was a librarian so we could not be in better hands; we are hugely grateful. Our thanks to Stephen Hobbs too who beavers away keeping the website going, though sadly he is retiring at the end of the season. Many visitors have been guided by him, his knowledge of local history is huge. He is also our voluntary archivist and very good at putting records onto modern technology! We are a bit behind with the filmshow as so much time was spent clearing trees and not making the space, but all will be well soon. We might have use the nursery temporarily provided no one minds the grandchildrens’ mess! Also we are making some new display cases to house the diaries and travel journals of Sir H’s ancestors and my great uncle’s letters from WWI.

Our thoughts are now turning to Easter and for the first year we are having an Easter Egg Hunt in the Bluebells on Easter Sunday and Monday for our visiting children. Theresa, our wonderful, creative, Administrator (normal seen running about from coach to coach) has been thinking up some ingenious clues, all rhyming, and we just hope for good weather. I am trying to decide how many Easter eggs to buy as we don’t want any disappointed children, equally we cannot possibly eat hundreds of left over eggs! I am locking them in the larder so no grandchildren can get them first! Theresa is also busily making some lovely old fashioned games and I have seen her knitting needles and brown wool all ready to make some surprises! The bluebells should be looking beautiful as Easter is so late. As well, we will then have our Bluebell Sunday on the 27th April when we will have the reduced entry as we do on all our spring flower days. The foxgloves should be coming out then and April is such a good time for the gardens here.

The walls round the Vegetable Garden are looking so smart thanks to a grant from the Higher Level Scheme. The coping on the top of the walls has been restored; it had fallen off in great chunks and a large buddleia  population had established itself and basically the walls were not going to last much longer without emergency help. They do look a bit barer than usual but with the Hartland climate, normality will soon be restored! About two weeks to go before the builders disappear along with a hideous blue container that doubles as a shelter (with electricity) and a store. It does not really enhance the 18thC gardens! Nigel looks rather envious as they get inside for their coffee; poor old chap only has rather a dark shed with intermittent electricity but a lovely woodburner to warm up by.

 

We have had a great

 

 

sadness; Alice my adored terrier and best friend for the past 15 years was staying with our daughter near Tiverton while we were away for the weekend. She decided she wanted to come home to the farm and just set off to travel 15 miles. Sadly, she never made it; she had not worked out how to cross the horrid North Devon Link Road. It was devastating, firstly for us all not knowing where she was and then finding out thanks to a kind man who had seen her lying by the road. She was on the direct line between us and our daughter’s house and would have made it save for the invention of the car. She was the most incredible character and I miss her dreadfully. She is buried in our garden which she spent most of her life digging up! Our visitors to the Abbey will probably have mixed emotions as many have seen her, always next to me while gardening, on a lead, as her teeth had a bit of a reputation! Other dogs were always greeted with the most awful growls but it was only Alice being fiercely protective. Life will never be the same without her.

We managed to fit in a week’s holiday in March on a lovely island, La Gomera, in the Canary Islands. No people(or canaries) but lots of wonderful walks and wildflowers. A lovely rest. We also had a day at Cheltenham races and were thrilled to see our son in law finish third on The Giant Bolster in the Gold Cup. He had a wonderful week with three Festival winners on Dynaste, Western Warhorse and Ballynagour, all for his boss, David Pipe and the supportive owners.

We have some incredible theatre to look forward to this summer. Richard Wolfenden-Brown, the-more-than-dynamic Director of the Plough Arts Centre in Torrington, has confirmed seven productions ranging from ‘The Tempest’ (lets hope the weather doesn’t match the description) to ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ for the children. We have also been given ‘Candleford’, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’, ‘Robin Hood’, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’. We are even having a matinee and an evening performance of Candleford. There is literally something for everyone. We will again be having the delicious barbecue and plenty of liquid refreshment! We are really looking forward to an entertaining summer on the front lawn. All the details are on the Hartland Abbey website under ‘Events’.

Finally May 4th is when all the supremely fit of North Devon and further afield amass at Hartland Abbey for the second ‘Hartland Hartbreaker’ cross country run. Starting at the Abbey with a stampede, hundreds of men and women attack the steep hills of the North Devon Coastal Footpath for twenty something miles of agony in order to raise money for The Children’s Hospice South West.  It is a fantastic cause and we admire all these people raising money for the CHSW. Anyone who would like to donate to this wonderful charity can go to their website.

The donkeys and black sheep with all their lambs will be back in the park next week. We can’t put the donkeys onto all the spring grass before the sheep come back otherwise they will get laminitis which is agonising; however the sheep can’t come back until the lambs are a tiny bit older otherwise they are just feed for the foxes and badgers which is very distressing.

 

 

 

With seemingly incessant rain falling, gales blowing, trees crashing, the stream flooding and high tides encroaching, the Abbey is besieged. Sadly, we have had to cancel our Snowdrop Sundays for the second year in succession which is a great shame; we have such a lovely display here which we always look forward to sharing with our visitors

and,usually, with lots of their four-legged friends! However with so many trees damaged in the storms which have either had to be cut down or made safe there are many impassable walks and paths. The car park is under water and the mud is horrible! Dave and Leighton spend nearly all their time clearing gutters and drains to keep the water flowing away from  the bedrooms and the basement, which houses the museum, dairy and exhibition.  It all takes up valuable winter time, reserved for important maintenance which will have to be shelved.

Hartland Quay is being battered on a daily basis by the 90 mile an hour gales but so far the damage isn’t too bad. Bits of the slipway wall have fallen off and a few slates here and there but considering the force of the battering it is standing up well to the elements, thankfully. What a difference a few months make when looking at the photographs of Bear Rock at Hartland Quay!

 Jill and Chris, the managers, are doing a fantastic job decorating the rooms. The lounge is so smart with its new curtains and lovely window seats all made by Sue Macdonald from Philham. She is a brilliant curtain maker and is also responsible for the lovely new curtains in some of the bedrooms at the Abbey. Sitting in the lounge window in the Quay Hotel, beside the fire, is the best place possible to watch the enormous seas crashing over the rocks in winter. 

The Walled Gardens have survived almost unscathed save the bottom greenhouse which has lost most of its roof. It was not in great shakes anyway but it is a job we were hoping would wait until next year when we could restore it properly. But in the meantime some sheets of perspex will have to

suffice until there is enough in the pot to do the job properly! It is a vital greenhouse which overwinters all the tender perennials and grows tomatoes in the summer and has been there for at least 100 years.  Thankfully, so far, we have had only two nights of light frost all winter so nothing has suffered from the cold.

In the Walled Garden the wintersweet (chimonanthus praecox) and the sweet box (sarcococca hookeriana) are flowering and when the air is still,

the heavenly scent fills the air. It is a lovely moment in January when I can pick the first sprigs of these treasures and bring them into the house. They are not the best lookers but my goodness they give such pleasure. Vita Sackville-West, in her wonderful Garden Book from the 1950s, extolled their virtues. The camellias are covered in flowers but it is almost impossible to appreciate their beauty in the lashing rain! All the snowdrops and crocuses are appearing fast and the daffodils are looking promising for our Daffodil Sunday on March 16th.

We have grabbed the bull by the horns and are about to start capping the garden walls in the places where they are at their most precarious. Being such an important part of the Abbey desmenes and having been built in the 18thC we just cannot ignore their state. Over the years bits have fallen off and a good crop of buddleias has rooted high up. When the wind blows the buddleias rock and more stone dislodges! Work starts very shortly and will, hopefully, be finished by early April. We are hoping that the workmen will be

careful with all our precious plants in the borders. Nigel and Sam, the gardeners, have had an awful job lifting the wisteria tendrils off the top of the wall. Over 150 years old and the length of the wall, about 20 metres long, they now lie like snakes on the path. No one is sure how to get them up again as they are so heavy!

There is so much maintenance to be done in the winter and just not enough time and manpower to do it during the time we are closed to the public. For many years Leighton, on his own, has performed miracles but now anno domini is catching up and everything takes that much longer. Poor chap, every time he starts a vital job another tree comes crashing down or drains need clearing and then he has to get the chainsaw out again and that is at least a week of vital time gone.

Blackpool Mill and The Bear need maintenance too in the winter while they are empty. They are always full up with families over Christmas and the New Year and then they go quiet later in January and February. Having been full up for most of the year they both need a vital facelift. New bedding, duvets etc need to be bought and all the curtains

and chair covers washed and walls painted. We want all our guests to feel as though they are the first in the cottages, all through the year! Debbie and Anne, the housekeepers, are wonderful and do a great job between lets. It is not always easy for them if there has been an untidy family who leave late, but they work wonders. St Margaret’s Hospice shop in Dulverton has the best selection of puzzles and books of any charity shop and whenever I pass it I always call in to add to the cottage libraries! We think it is essential to have lots of good books for those wet days when guests want to curl up in front of the log-burning stoves or to lie in the incessant summer sun in North Devon! We still have the February half term weeks available and even if this extraordinarily wild weather continues the cottages are fully central heated and have lovely wood burners to curl up in front of after some really good stimulating walks along the coast. You will definitely get a reduction!It is time to redo the Abbey leaflet for 2014; always an exciting and worrying combination! Exciting to change the design but worrying in that it has to ‘sell’ the Abbey for the forthcoming season and we mustn’t forget to put in all the new events which are still not sorted out. My computer is so full of photographs which are less than well organised and trying to find that vital ‘magical’ image of the garden that someone took in July is not so easy!

There is lots to look forward to this year. Daffodil Day is not far off (16th March) which will be the first opportunity to see the lovely collection of our historic daffodils and there will be lots of primroses and violets as well as many

early spring flowers in the gardens. It is a lovely time to visit before the opening season proper starts and is a great chance to come in at a reduced price which also admits visitors to the museum, William Stukeley Exhibition and the shop. The house is open too at a small extra charge. The Old Kitchens will be open again for the first time this year; after such a successful first season we are thrilled that Jo and Kath will be back in their pinnies again serving their delicious homemade lunches and cream teas. In addition there will be hot soup and hot pasties which always assures boiling hot weather! They did such a fantastic job last year and we are thrilled they want to continue. Passing the Tea Room always made us feel hungry at the sight of the scrumptious cakes!

We have exciting times ahead. We open for the season on 30th March when all the spring flowers should be looking lovely and then we have a fabulous  Easter Sunday and Monday of fun to look forward to. Being so late (20th and

21st April)  it is at our best bluebell time and so we will be combining Bluebell Days with an Easter Egg Hunt and some traditional children’s games. We will also be open on Good Friday too. The following weekend (27th April) there will be a Bluebell Sunday. These days are great fun for all ages and, very importantly, lots of doggies! Then on May 5th we will have a second running of the Hartland Hartbreaker, a gruelling cross-country run up and down the coast and around the Hartland Abbey Estate all in aid of

the wonderful Children’s Hospice South West. It is open to all but you need to be seriously tough and fit!

Later, in summer we are having some wonderful outdoor theatre in conjunction with The Plough Arts Centre, Torrington. This will be the third year of working together and we are so thankful to Richard Wolfenden-Brown for bringing the performing arts to Hartland Abbey. It is really great fun. This summer we have The Tempest, George’s Marvellous Medicine, The Pirates of Penzance and Robin Hood to look forward to, and there might be more! All the details of all the events, admission prices etc are on our website and the Plough Arts

Centre website.

Last, and certainly not least, news on Timmy, the ginger kitten who many people met last year in the kiosk. We were so worried that the dogs would eat him up which they had almost succeeded in doing once, but with great care and a lot of threats to the dogs as to what would happen to them IF they ate him up, everyone is living very happily together now, thank goodness. Timmy now rules the roost and the dogs give me very old-fashioned looks as if to say ‘do we really have to have this thing in our house’ but Nellie, the puppy, and Tim have wonderful games together. During this horrible weather he is definitely not earning his keep, keeping the mouse population under control, and we have had to have a few words with him on this as cat food is very expensive and we do want to see a return! However he has taken no notice and spends all day and night curled up on the sofa while the mice run riot. Hopefully he will be in the kiosk to welcome evryone this year but not on the days that Mick mans the kiosk – he is not too keen on cats! Colin, however, loves them! Do come and visit us and have lots of fun. We so enjoy meeting our visitors and do all we can to make a happy day for everyone who visits Hartland Abbey.

For the first time this year I find myself actually sitting in the Rose Garden, taking in the beauty in the late summer sun and admiring the result of all Nigel’s hard work. Sitting down is not something we do much in our family; a sense of guilt soon

rears its head as there is always something to be done. But today, with my amazing 91 year old mother, we are having Saturday afternoon in the peace of the Walled Gardens, perhaps sharing

that experience which our visitors have enjoyed all summer. Last year, with such awful weather,  there was never a day like this with the late summer scent of the buddleias and phloxes wafting through the air. It is the smell of hot summers of childhood, just before we went back to school for the autumn term. The sensation never leaves you. The phloxes, roses, honeysuckles and jasmines all combine to fill the air with a heavenly scent and beautiful colours so enjoyed also by this year’s hatch of fritillary butterflies. The purple artichoke flowers are heaven for the bees. The whole atmosphere is so comforting in this beautiful, warm, low sun.

My conscience has been stirred; the lavender needs cutting in the warm sun. Lots of lavender bags are guaranteed. But

what a fulfilling and peaceful task. Under the lavender the grape hyacinth are already appearing, a stark reminder that we have to endure winter before we see these little blue jewels appearing in spring! There is no noise here, just the buzzing of bees to keep me company. It seems such a far cry from some moaning Minnie who visited us in June and wrote rude things on the awful Trip Advisor about the temperature in our house! It was the coldest June on record and yet some people arrived in tea shirts and expected the Abbey to be at 80 degrees; if they had to foot the heating bill they would soon realise why we wear warm jerseys instead of ordering more oil! Anyway all those memories are a far cry from the wonderful summer that we are still enjoying.

The doors in the garden are so smart now. Leighton has done a wonderful job with a pot of green paint. Hopefully the walls will be mended this winter, then we will be really smart!

2013 is proving good for new young blood at the Abbey. Firstly the arrival of the baby donkey, Snowdrop the Second, andnow Tim and Nellie have arrived, both deliciously marmalade coloured! Tim is a very beautiful ginger kitten who has many fans already, admiring him as he sits outside in the beautiful sunshine or latterly running the front hall and the payhut! Nellie is our Labrador puppy who is almost round with razor

sharp milk teeth. She is adorable but very naughty; her favourite amusement is chewing a squeaky plastic effigy of Boris Johnson with a shock of bright blond hair! Madge has been her nanny since she arrived with us and like all the best nannies has enormous patience.  Alice just looks grumpy and is put out by the influx of youth at the Abbey. The peacocks are very curious. Both Tim and Nellie love all the attention from our visitors and are extremely spoilt!

August has been frenetic at the Abbey with so many of the family staying. All nine grandchildren

adore it here with the beach on our doorstep. Having had a proper summer for the first time in about five years the sea is really warm and it has been picnics every day and no

macs! The Hartland Carnival at the beginning of August is always a big highlight of the holidays. That such a small community could put on such a brilliant show is extraordinary; the floats are enormous fun and the result of a lot of hard work. The children love it and we all have fish and chips and (for us) delicious local cider! Apparently, it is the best carnival west of Bridgewater! The streets of Hartland are filled with people and all the money collected goes to worthy local charities.

The ‘William Stukeley-Saviour of Stonehenge’ Exhibition has been popular with our visitors and many have asked for an accompanying book. Perhaps a good project for this winter but I think I need to hide for a month in order not to be disturbed! I will have to ask David Northmore if he is feeling energetic too! 

At the end of the month the local multi-national pharmaceutical firm, Activis, chose Hartland

Abbey as the venue for their employees and families day out. It was a great honour to be chosen and we were very fortunate to have wonderful weather for the thousand people who came. All the brilliant organisation had been done by Activis and resulted in a lot of fun for all ages. Hugely talented Victorian entertainers, Punch and Judy and acrobats were the flavour of the day along with traditional fairground rides providing a great atmosphere,  very fitting to the backdrop of the Abbey. Guests were able to enjoy the walks to the beach and the gardens and many people visited the house which was open for the afternoon. It was a very happy and relaxed day out thanks to Actavis’s very efficient organisation. 

We have had some wonderful theatre performances on the lawn, seven in all. We started in June with Lark Rise and have just finished with ‘Babe the Sheep Pig’ by Illyria travelling theatre

company who performed ‘The Mikado’ with us the previous week. Both were fantastic productions which attracted big audiences. We are sad the season is over now but are so grateful to Richard Wolfenden-Brown and The Plough Arts Centre at Torrington for bringing the productions to Hartland Abbey. The bar, barbecue and children’s chocolate fountain have been very popular additions and have saved people having to bring picnics. Hopefully we will carry on the tradition next year.

On Friday 6th September, Simon Armitage, the poet, will be stopping off for the night at Hartland Abbey on his walk round the South West Coastal Footpath. This will culminate in a new book but whilst staying the night with us he will be giving a poetry reading in the Drawing Room There are a few tickets still available at a suggested donation of £6.50 for wine and cheese in the Dining Room which kicks off at 7pm. All details from [email protected] Ring us at the Abbey for tickets. All this has been arranged by the indefatigable Alison Heimann at the AONB. Thanks to Alison for what promises to be a fascinating evening.

Our thoughts are turning to jobs for the winter, of which there are always many. Carol is looking thrilled as I mentioned ‘doing up the loos’! ‘Not before time’ came the reply but we all know here that our wish list is very long and normally there is a drama like the roof leaking and then all has to go on the back burner again! As Leighton is the only person capable of ‘doing up the loos’ we just have to hope that the roof doesn’t leak, Blackpool Mill and The Bear stay in one piece and that the hundred and one other jobs can be put on hold. THEN we can have posh loos like the National Trust! Mind you that is the only thing we want like The NT, everything else they do is stereotypical NT and we are not at all stereotypical anything here!

Finally a huge thank you to all the wonderful people who have visited us this summer and written some really kind and touching remarks in our comments book. It is hugely appreciated as everyone who helps us in every way here gives their all.  We have entered two competitions in North Devon, for Best Visitor Attraction www.northdevon.com/daysout  for Best Tea Room www.northdevon.com/vote so if anyone feels like supporting us, we would be hugely grateful. Kath and Jo have worked so hard in their first year in the Tea Room and they have had some amazing compliments on their scrumptious food! Theresa, our new Administrator, has worked tirelessly to give everyone who visits the best possible time here, ferrying lots of less able people to the gardens and generally going far beyond the call of duty. She is marvellous. We are very lucky. Thank you Theresa!

Last but not least, this afternoon we had a lovely surprise. One of our old ‘boys’ from Highgate Junior School, who were here in the war, just walked in, having taken four trains and nearly as many buses to get here from Norfolk. Not bad for a sprightly mid-octogenarian! It was lovely to see Roger Kettle and we all had a lovely cup of tea in the evening sun. We miss our Highgate Reunions so much but please, if any of you read this, do be in touch. We have so many happy memories.

PS I can never get the photographs in the right place in my blog; I must get a lesson from the grandchildren…

The house is radiating beauty with the wonderful pot plants and displays by Nigel, our head gardener. He is superb at growing geraniums and pelargoniums and although summer has deserted us for a few days now, the house is looking

wonderful.  Thank you to all the visitors who came on Thursday and kept your sense of humour! We were not there but by all accounts the house was full to bursting as the rain poured down outside but everyone was amazing in the scrum! Kath and Jo did their best to keep everyone well fed and watered in the Tea Room.

The Walled Gardens are looking really beautiful. They are such a credit to Nigel, and Sam our part time gardener, and Dave who keeps the grass mown. The camellias, rhododendrons and azaleas are nearly over now in the woodland gardens but the crinodendron and embothrium  (Flame Tree) in the Bog Garden look stunning. I feel sad when spring leaves us but the Walled Gardens come into their own now.

At last the William Stukeley exhibition is up and running. We are thrilled to see all the months of research and design come to fruition in a stunning display thanks to David Northmore’s imaginative and creative thinking. It has been a real joint effort but the uniqueness is all his doing and we are so thankful to him.  We were thrilled that he and his wife Lenis flew from America to  be here at Hartland for the opening by Robin Makeig-Jones, Commercial Director of North Devon +, on June 7th. (Robin had been seen by millions on the BBC Antiques Roadshow, filmed at Hartland Abbey in 2011, with fairy china painted by his aunt, Daisy Makeig-Jones, for Wedgwood).  We are so grateful to Leader4 and the North Devon AONB for their part funding of our project.  We are also incredibly grateful to the wonderful people who volunteered to help with this project. You know who you are, thank you so much.

We have had some wonderful comments on the display. So many people will have read of William Stukeley when visiting Stonehenge and Avebury but few will know any more about the man who apart from so much else, was with Isaac Newton when he discovered gravity through the falling apple. Stukeley

was the first to write Newton’s memoirs, a facsimile of which is on display. Anyone interested in our great stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury should, we hope, find this enjoyable. The BBC has provided us with a really interesting radio programme on Stukeley from many years ago which provides a good background commentary.

The outdoor theatre season here is already in full swing. We have been lucky to have had dry evenings, albeit cold! But Trevor and Emma with their Mr. Crackling’s barbecue have produced the most delicious home-made burgers and steaks to keep us well fed and warm. We have a wine and Pimms Bar too to make a real evening at the theatre. Many thanks to Richard Wolfenden-Brown of The Plough for bringing theatre to

Hartland Abbey for another season of entertaining evenings.

 Miracle Theatre’s performance of ‘Waiting for Godot’ last night was brilliantly acted, a really outstanding performance of this extraordinary play. I urge anyone who has the chance, to see it. Miracle Theatre are touring the West Country for the next couple of months -don’t miss them! You would be pushed to see such good acting in the West End.

To start the season last weekend we had ‘Lark Rise’ performed by the Plough ‘in the round’. It was a great tale of country folk with a very powerful and emotional ending. Well done to the Plough for a good and

entertaining production.

Saturday 29th June at 5pm sees Heartbreak Theatre returning with a new performance, ‘Alice -an Extraordinary Adventure’. I am sure this will be enchanting family entertainment. We will  be having the barbecue, hot and cold drinks, cream teas and the bar for the parents! Then we will have to wait until August for four great evenings of theatre – Romeo and Juliet, Treasure Island, The Mikado and Babe the Sheep Pig. There is something for everyone!

We have a cancellation for Blackpool Mill from Friday 27th June for a week. It is a great time to be down there so please contact us if you would like the week at a last minute discount! We also have some weeks available in September at The Bear and Blackpool. It is normally such a beautiful time at Hartland with the huge spring tides and a warm sea to bathe in. All the details are on our website.

Thank you to everyone who has visited us and hopefully the weather will improve and we will all be able to enjoy a great summer at Hartland.

Everything is so beautiful in the valley; the pink campions, the lingering bluebells, the emerging foxgloves, the wild orchids and the wild garlic are putting on the best display for years. God’s garden really is the best! Our paths leading to the beach look prettier than anything at the Chelsea Flower Show, and not a human hand has gone into the design! The sea pinks clinging to the cliff at Blackpool Mill are the brightest pink we have ever seen. The cold

winter and spring have conspired to hold everything back and then to put on this amazing show.

The walled gardens are looking stunning with the Red Shine tulips doing just what they say, shining against the clear blue sky. It is so peaceful in the gardens here, the silence only broken by the two peacocks shrieking across the valley to their wives who, they do not realise, have succumbed to the fox.  It is so sad. They are desperate for some new wives. Instead, they are displaying their full plumage to the guinea fowl who look very confused.

Today we have two weddings in the walled garden and what a day they have chosen. The first really warm day with not a cloud in the sky. I am so thrilled for the couples and we wish them well. After all the planning they were rewarded with the perfect wedding day. Rhododendrons and azaleas are emerging

in all the walks, just on time for the holiday weekend. How the visitors have deserved this fine weather; for once they have been rewarded! People are enjoying the beach without winter coats and I have even seen some shorts for the first time (except our dear postman who wears them all year)!

Only two weeks to go (June 9^th) until the exhibition opening with at least six weeks work to do in that time! This has become a labour of love and my husband loves telling people that I am now married to an 18thC antiquary, so much time has been spent doing this. But never have I met such a lovable, eccentric, fascinating character as William Stukeley who enjoyed his evenings at Cambridge drinking and eating with friends at the same table as half dissected dogs and cats, his research for

that day! The exhibition will be a muddle of everything he did from his memoirs of his friend, Isaac Newton, his drawings and records of Stonehenge and Avebury, his Itinerarium Curiosum around Britain along with his description and pictures of dissecting an elephant with Sir Hans Sloane in his garden in 1720. There will be lots to see…!

Finally, well done Simon Haywood for organising the first Hartland Hartbreaker cross country run at Hartland Abbey a couple of weeks ago now. All in aid of The Childrens Hospice South West, it was a fantastic effort not only on Simon’s part but by all the runners who endured 18 miles of the toughest terrain of the coastal path together with miles of rough ground on the Abbey estate and through the gardens. It was a great day with some very happy but very sore participants at the end of the day but all for a wonderful cause. The winner was from the Tiverton Harriers and was home in just over two hours, an amazing effort. But huge

congratulations to our six Hartland runners (sadly Lisa is not in the photograph), one of whom was fifth overall which really was terrific. Congratulations to Ross and to all of them! It reminded me of the London marathon a few weeks before. Our daughter ran in it for the first time, in aid of the Children’s Hospice SW, with her knee breaking down at 15 miles and walking the last 11 miles at a limp. Whatever the agony, determination overcomes it when you are raising money for children with terminal illnesses.

We were very sad that we had to cancel Snowdrop Weekend but we decided soon after Christmas that the waterlogged ground would not dry out in time for cars to park on it. Luckily we were entirely vindicated as the ground is still completely saturated and everyone would have been stuck in the car park. Lets hope 2014 will be kinder to us and Snowdrop Days will return.

Since Christmas everyone has been flat out with our exciting new projects at the Abbey.
The new kitchen and Tea Room are beginning to look really good for the start of the season. Jo  and Kath, both local Hartland girls, have taken on the lease of the Tea Room from the church ladies who retired in 2012 after 26 years! After stripping off centuries of paint, Leighton has repainted the walls and the room now looks really fresh. Kath and Jo have brought some very pretty tablecloth material, the new china has arrived, Lofty has attached a new electricity supply and soon masses of delicious food and drink will be provided for our visitors. The big question now is what sort of coffee machine to have…! Carol has been having a major springclean all winter. We hired the carpet cleaning machine to do the red carpet in the Alhambra passage; it was horrifying to see how filthy the water was but hardly surprising after many thousands of people had walked round the house last summer. Thanks to our fashionable blue overshoes it wasn’t worse! Apologies to those who don’t like wearing them but please think of Carol and what it would be like in your own home if 14,000 people walked round it, straight from the garden!

Nigel, Sam and Dave are hard at work to get the gardens looking smart for opening. Torrential rain all winter hasn’t helped, in fact it has brought down a lot of trees and branches and part of the garden wall. It has just made a lot more work. But morale is

very high and Nigel will produce a wonderful display come the spring. We are so lucky to have such a fantastic team.

Our next big project is staging the ‘William Stukeley – Saviour of Stonehenge’ exhibition; again poor old Leighton has been hard at work lining the walls in the ‘dungeon’ to make a good display space. When we decided to stage this I deluded myself into thinking it would be easy. Having got to know William Stukeley a lot better I realise how wrong I was. Trying to sort out what to display is the difficult bit; he is such an intriguing subject, friend of Sir Isaac Newton,a polymath into everything imaginable from saving Stonehenge and Avebury to dissecting a dead elephant in the centre of London with Sir Hans Sloane in 1720. My husband’s cousin who is a professor in America is being a wonderful help and support. David has created a fantastic, very original  design for the display so it is all becoming a reality. We have to go to the Bodleian soon to get some images. Hopefully we will be able to open  in May.

The Bear has been really spruced up and has now got WIFI and some smart new hanging cupboards since last season. It

is a really cosy cottage for a holiday. We are putting in lots more tongue and groove at Blackpool Mill as the walls are always crumbling, they are so old. Poor Leighton never stops painting them. The t and g should make it much warmer too and use less oil.

We have had terrible donkey sadness. Bluebell, who has enchanted us and our visitors, young and not-so, for so long suddenly became ill last week and was off her food. Our wonderful vet came and took blood samples which came back with the bad news that she had an incurable liver disease. She would never recover and to save her further sufferingshe was put to sleep immediately with her sister Nutmeg beside her. She is great friends with Qajar and Harold, our retired point-to-pointers, but she realises that racehorses are no substitute for her lost sisters. Donkeys must have company to be happy. But the good news is that today we have picked up the

nicest mother and daughter donkeys, Becky and Snowdrop II (as she arrived at snowdrop time!), from nearby who have settled in really well already and will soon be meeting our visitors when we open. It will be lovely for all the visiting children to have a baby donkey to pat. We are still terribly sad to lose Bluebell as she was 37 and very much part of the family.

We are all really looking forward to our new season. Daffodil Day is on Sunday 17th March and then the season starts properly on

24th March. Bluebell Days on 21st and 28th April. The Hartland Hartbreaker Charity Run on 5th May – it sounds awful – 17 miles of sheer hell but in aid of a wonderful cause, The Children’s Hospice and our own Parish Hall as well. So much to do before then. …Theresa has done some wonderful new interpretation notices for our displays so everything will look so much better in 2013.

We have lots of exciting theatre productions coming up in the summer. So it is all go down at the Abbey in 2013….

Martin Dorey, the Campervan Man, is putting on some exciting Campervan holidays here, by the river. Here he is on his last visit to Hartland when he was making a film in 2010. Martin is great fun and his holidays will be fantastic .

This week I mustn’t forget to design our new leaflet, check proofs for our advertising, order the seeds, order all the new catering equipment for Kath and Jo, start deadheading at least 200 hydrangeas, help Alice write her blog, go to the Bodleian to research the exhibition and so it goes on! ‘Apparently’, according to the children, it keeps us young! We will see.

It is already mid-November and Christmas is approaching rapidly over the horizon. With our four children, their other halves, nine grandchildren, my mother and other friends staying and another influx on Boxing Day, now is the time I have to start cooking. With so many presents to buy and wrap up and masses of food to prepare I try to get organised early on so that I can actually enjoy Christmas! There is always the risk of getting flu just at the worst time as everyone is arriving; even a flu injection doesn’t seem to do the job properly! We buy our turkey from a near neighbour who produces the most delicious turkeys who have lived a very happy life. I normally provide good post-Christmas business to our local chiropractor, Frank Loftus, in South Molton as heaving a turkey which feeds 20 people in and out of the Aga normally does my back in! But it is a wonderful time all together with all the children and their children and ninety year old great-granny!

This autumn has been particularly busy for us at the Abbey with exciting things happening for next season.  At the end of September we said goodbye sadly to Nancy Johns and all the wonderful ladies from St Nectan’s Church who had run the Abbey Tea Rooms for the past 26 years. Anno domini was catching up and there were just not enough younger volunteers to take it on. We also said goodbye to Mary Heard who had been our Administrator for nearly as long and has been such a support to us over that time. Just before we closed we held a lunch in aid of Elizabeth Finn which does such great work to help elderly people. Mark Poltimore, who is a cousin of my husband, came down to Hartland and gave a very amusing talk about being an expert on the Antiques Roadshow. He brought lots of slides and kept the audience enthralled with ‘behind the scenes’ stories. The Elizabeth Finn committee then gave everyone the most fantastic buffet lunch in the Dining Room, all cooked by themselves.

Every cloud has a silver lining as they say and out of the ether has appeared Kath Morrison and Jo Wade to take over the running of the cafe in the Old Kitchens.  Kath has been helping us in the kiosk, welcoming visitors and stewarding in the past and has a history of catering. Her friend Jo has a shop in Bideford currently but will be starting a new career feeding all our visitors! It promises to carry on with the same ethos of good home baking with all the familiar homemade scones and cakes but will have exciting new additions like hot paninis and cappucino coffee from the coffee machine! We are moving forward…!

Leighton, our wonderful handyman for the past umpteen years, is busily redecorating the Tea Rooms and soon a new kitchen will be installed with ovens and all mod cons ready for its launch on  Snowdrop Weekend!

Theresa Seligmann has taken over Mary’s job as Administrator and is attacking the job with huge enthusiasm and energy! She has lots of ideas to make everyone’s visit more exciting.  We have started by revamping our website with the help of Stephen Hobbs our honourary archivist who is so good at all the technical stuff.  We have still got a bit of tweaking to do until we are really happy with it but it is such an improvement on the last one.  It should make it easier for potential visitors to see what we do.

We have so many exciting events for 2013 and we will keep posting the details when we have them. Our opening times for 2013 will be completely different from previous years; we will be open from Sunday to Thursday all season from March 24th – October 6th inclusive from 11.30 – 5pm and closed on Friday and Saturdays.

We start the season with Snowdrop Weekend on 9th and 10th February.  It is always such an exciting time with the thousands of snowdrops appearing from the Walled Gardens to the sea. We open up other parts of the estate which are not normally open where the snowdrops grow so there is masses of room to explore and for children and dogs to run wild! We always encourage visitors to bring as many dogs as possible and the result is the most amazing array of all shapes, sizes and breeds. Some arrive in posh coats which are soon covered in mud as the pooches go berserk in all the space!

I always mean to hold a Dog Show at the same time but people might freeze to death at that time of year!

In March we have our annual Daffodil Day on Sunday 17th and then we reopen for the season on Sunday 24th March in time for Easter.  The week of April 21st – 28th we will open every day for Bluebell Week which is such a beautiful time of year and hopefully a bit warmer by then. On Sunday 5th May, during the first bank holiday weekend, we hold a very exciting new event called The Hartland Hartbreaker which sounds hellish as it is a really gruelling cross-country race starting and finishing at the Abbey. Apparently it is about 15 miles long, up and down the steep coastal footpath, through the fields on the estate and through as much mud and water as possible, we are told!  It is all in aid of some very good causes including the Children’s Hospice, South West. We will hope lots of people will come, not only to take part but to watch as well. More details will be posted on our website when we know what is happening. At all our events we hope to have Sam and Em Stone from Exmoor Kitchen with their delicious barbecue as well as the Tea Room producing some delicious drinks and eats and hot pasties. We will also be holding Outdoor Theatre events during the summer but we have not got any dates yet but I know ‘Treasure Island’ is in the offing in August. This will be very befitting to Hartland as years ago the film was made here.

For the whole 2013 season we are planning to stage an exhibition on William Stukeley who was a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, wrote on his famous apple experience, was instrumental in saving Stonehenge and Avebury from being ground up into road building materials and is a distant ancestor of my husband. He was an amazing man who seemed to have achieved more in his life than most people would in 10 lives. We have his portrait by Kneller looking down on us every day in the Little Dining Room so it is fun researching his life which ranged from being a druid, an antiquarian, an archaeologist to a vicar! We also hope to have scale models of Stonehenge and Avebury made by a local person. I was inspired by hearing two programmes about Sir William on BBC Radio 4 recently.

The donkeys are back at the farm in great luxury with lots to eat and plenty of shelter.  Alice has taken up her winter living next to the Aga between forays to chase anything that moves. Nowadays most things escape as she has slowed down a bit! I have been wanting a cat for ages but knew that it wouldn’t survive with the dogs but I now feel much more confident as Alice is much lazier. Hopefully we will get a kitten soon as the mouse problem is awful. They seem to thrive on mouse poison and take the bait to have picnics in the beds while making holes in the blankets to make nests! It is very annoying (and expensive).

We have just had a couple of days in London attending the Historic Houses Association AGM. They are the most wonderful organisation for us house owners, helping us with our problems and giving us great inspiration. Being able to discuss house opening with other people in similar circumstances is enormously helpful.  Most historic houses in private ownership are members. They run an excellent Friends Organisation which with an annual membership subscription allows free entry into all open HHA houses and many that are normally closed to the public.

The family have had busy summers and autumns. Our eldest daughter with her husband, Tom Scudamore the jockey, moved house into an old farmhouse which they painted themselves from top to toe. They are now ensconced well in time for Christmas. Tom had a successful weekend at Cheltenham with a couple of winners and a handful of seconds.

It has rained and blown so much lately that a huge chunk of the Walled Garden wall has fallen down, luckily not on top of anyone. Just what we did not want when we are so busy.  Nigel and Sam are working so hard at the moment cutting down the borders and planting all the tulips for next spring.  We are going with the same colours again which we love but next year I think  we will be really radical and have a complete change!

We have differing shades of purple, yellow and red in the Rose Garden which look stunning, purples in the pots and bright red in the pots by the front door. Nigel has done a wonderful job in his first season and we had many compliments particularly on his stunning displays in the summerhouse.

With so much to do to get the exhibition and the tea rooms ready it may be a while before the next blog! A happy Christmas and New Year to all who have visited us in the past and we hope to see you back again soon.

Angela Stucley

September is beckoning and August seems to have disappeared before it has begun. So much has been going on down here in the valley. The Abbey has been full with visitors, friends and our growing family who come in search of the sun and sand. Sadly the former has been in short supply,  but every cloud has a silver lining and this has been the year of the hydrangea!  The Shrubbery has been a sea of blue with the Blue Wave lacecaps

and the inky blue of the mopheads but almost the prettiest are the white lacecaps with their beautiful blue eyes. Those of our visitors who have ventured over the Abbey river have been enjoying them enormously. The Walled Gardens are still looking stunning with the peppery-smelling purple phloxes in full bloom and helianthemums, penstemon, japanese anenomes, fuchsias and lots of autumn flowers coming into flower.  Nigel has created a wonderful, rather Victorian, display in the summerhouse which has been a lovely refuge to garden visitors who are caught in the not infrequent downpours of late.  The greenhouses are stunning with huge displays of geraniums and many beautiful tender and rare plants. At last the vegetables too are in full production; we have gone from famine to feast and will have plenty to sell to visitors.

Thank you to all our wonderful visitors who have written such kind and encouraging comments in our book. It means such a lot to the whole team here.  Our room stewards, who have spent the last six months, mainly on their feet, explaining the finer details of each room to visitors, do such an amazing job and it is particularly nice to read such complimentary comments about them.  Also what people seem to appreciate so much here is the fact that we are a real family home and not a ‘museum’ and we love to meet as many visitors as possible. The only family member who is no longer able to be on public view is Alice, our adored Jack Russell, who has sometimes let the side down in the past by a nip here and there. Sadly I can no longer risk an increased 18 month prison sentence so she will either be seen firmly on a lead or will be in her very comfy basket out of sight!

During August we have had two brilliant theatre productions for children, The Twits and King Arthur.  Both afternoons were dry and were fantastically well attended with 400 here for The Twits and slightly less for King Arthur. We are so thankful to The Plough Arts Centre for bringing the productions here and to Illyria and the Cambridge Touring Theatre for putting on such stunning

performances.  Mr and Mrs Twit were truly disgusting!  On Saturday September 1st we will be putting on a Heartbreak Theatre production of ‘Private Lives’ by Noel Coward which we are all looking forward to so much. We will be sad when the theatre season is over as it has been such fun;  the front lawn has been a great stage. We will again be providing the barbecue and the Pimms and Wine Bar and so it is uneccesary to bring a picnic if you are feeling like a real night off.  It really is such a lovely evening out.

Blackpool Mill cottage and The Bear have been full up during the summer with some lovely families.  Thank you all for coming and we hope to see some of you back in the future. Next year is bound to be wall-to-wall sunshine! We have a few autumn weeks available in the cottages when it is lovely and quiet and normally beautiful weather!  Everyone this summer has been very stoical when it has poured with rain and Hartland has been lucky with much less rain than inland.  However we were pretty envious of London during the Olympics which

seemed to be almost totally dry. 

 Hartland village and the surrounding peninsula has so much to do for families nowadays in any weather; the Abbey with its gardens and walks are great fun for exploring, the village has great galleries, the Springfield pottery and no 39 pottery (where you can also learn to be a potter yourself), really good small shops, a good pub with good food,

Hartland Quay with rooms overlooking the Atlantic,  masses of sand on the beach at low tide and a great Wreckers Retreat bar and Tea Room, two really good camp sites: Stoke Barton overlooking the sea and Hartland site in the village and masses of really first class B and Bs.  St Nectan’s Church in Stoke has a most beautiful screen and ceiling decoration. The church is huge and is known as ‘The Cathedral of North Devon’ with its tall tower reputedly used by wreckers in days gone by to lure unsuspecting ships onto the jagged and deadly rocks at Hartland Quay. Docton Mill with its working mill and delicious refreshments has a really beautiful garden too. Last but not least some of the best beaches and surfing in the west country and Clovelly close by. Our children and grandchildren adore it here and never want to leave as there is so much to do. The Flower Festival in the church, the Craft Fair and Car Boot Sale this weekend have been enormous fun and there is another wonderful Farmer’s Market coming soon so never a dull moment! Both the holiday cottages will have many more books on their shelves thanks to the Car Boot Sale where there were nearly as many books on sale as in a large high street bookseller!

It is only a month now until we close at the end of September but there is still lots to look forward to in the gardens and ‘Private Lives’ on Sept 1st should be great fun. We still have on show the small exhibition of John Bampfylde’s recollections and mementos from the 1936 Olympic Games in which he was a membert of the British Fencing Team.   He was my husband’s uncle who was sadly killed in the same year in a steeplechase at Taunton.

Thank you to everyone who has visited and supported us this year. We hope to see many more of you before we close and the Abbey and all our wonderful staff have a well earned winter rest.  But there is all the redecorating and gardening to do so it is only a momentary rest…..!   Angela Stucley

Of course it is raining; it is Wimbledon. But unlike other years, we have arrived at the beginning of July and we have had no summer at all yet, with hardly any days to wear summer clothes. It is infinitely depressing to see the vegetables on a go-slow and the longed for Arran Pilot new potatoes succumbing to early blight, the courgettes refusing to budge, broad beans about a centimetre long and the slugs having a field day. It is just as bad on the farm. I have a very irritable husband, not surprisingly really; this must be the first time in 40 years of farming that we have actually made our silage in three days of incessant rain! Poor cows in the winter, their daily diet won’t be tasting too good but it is all they will have. There is no choice this year. But I feel most sad about the complete lack of apples and pears. I suppose this is inevitable as my husband gave me a wonderful apple press two Christmasses ago but we did have the luxury of a bumper crop last year. All the grandchildren turned their hand to applepressing which they loved and their reward for the very hard work of turning the stiff handle was to go home with old plastic milk bottles full of delicious fresh apple juice. It was a full-on battle with armies of wasps and the Waspeze was an essential back up! So now we wonder what the children (and the wasps) will do this autumn….

June started so happily with the Jubilee weekend and all the wonderful celebrations. Hartland really did the bunting in great style and the village looked very jolly. The flags are still flying despite horrendous gales since, and the village is looking very welcoming to all the summer visitors who come to this corner of England.  We have had some amazing visitors this summer, who even on the worst of days, have brought smiles and good humour to the house and written lovely comments in our book. Thank you to everyone who has made the effort to come this far and I am so sorry if we have not always been there to meet you.  Nigel and Sam in the garden have done everything possible to keep the gardens looking good; their job is the best in good weather but goodness it is hard work when the elements are against them. They bring fresh geraniums and house plants into the Abbey from the greenhouses every Monday to brighten up the house.

 We had two lovely weddings on the Saturday and Monday of the Jubilee weekend, both ceremonies were held in the Summerhouse in the Walled Gardens. They were so lucky and had beautiful weather and the gardens looked stunning. They had an enormous Teepee on the lawn for the evening receptions and the smell of the hog roasts was tantalising!

June has been very busy in the house and Carol, our wonderful housekeeper, certainly had no need to go to the gym with all the bedmaking! Our annual party of German walkers and gardeners brought by Jenny Curtis-Beard arrived in mid-June with 20 staying in the house. They were charming and we all really enjoyed the dinners in the evening around the big table catching up what they had done in the day. They loved walking the coastal footpath which is always at its

best in May and June, and visiting the many lovely gardens in the area including Docton Mill, Clovelly Court and Castle Hill. Jenny is a fantastic person who runs her own walking company, mainly coming to southwest England but also to the Alps; she brings parties every year to stay in the house. We have also thoroughly enjoyed having parties of Americans and Australians to visit the Abbey and gardens and to have lunch with us. Sir H takes wonderful conducted tours of the house with plenty of naughtly stories of earlier ancestors!

We held our first outdoor theatre performance in the garden on June 17th. We were so lucky with the weather that evening and we had a good sized audience who really enjoyed the production of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ performed by The Plough Arts Centre players. It was enormous fun and an excellent performance; the front lawn was a lovely setting for it.  Sam and Em from Exmoor Kitchen put on a delicious barbecue and we had a Pimms and Wine Bar ably run by Paula from Hartland Quay. Putting up the new ‘Party Tent’ for the bar was quite a feat in itself but we were determined to succeed as our children had told us emphatically that ‘we’ would never manage to do it! Next Saturday 7th July the Miracle Theatre is putting on ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ on the lawn so we are crossing our fingers for a lovely evening but if it rains it will still be great fun and there won’t be any need for mosquito cream! There will be lots of time beforehand to have a drink and wander round the gardens.  The barbecue will be delicious so there is no need to bring a picnic if you are feeling lazy!

Now July is here and all the grandchildren and their great grandmother are about to descend on us for their summer holidays. They adore staying at the Abbey and I do apologise in advance to any visitors who might find random toys lying about and the general untidiness that comes with exhuberant children and dogs! But it is a great joy to us and lots of the extended family and friends come too to make it a really happy time. I am afraid that it will be picnics on the beach huddled in mackintoshes, but luckily children are oblivious to the weather and freezing parents and only interested in making sandcastles. I will be doing my best to produce plenty of nourishment but it certainly won’t be Cordon Bleu!

Lets hope as soon as the children break up the sun will return! Angela Stucley

STOP PRESS!

Last Saturday (7/7/2012), with headlines of nothing but flooding in South Devon and Dorset, here in North Devon we had almost uninterrupted sun! We were so nervous having heard the forecast but we were able to hold another fantastic evening of outdoor theatre.  The Miracle Theatre Company, based in Redruth, put on a really fabulous performance of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ with a brilliant audience lapping up every word.  Not a drop of rain fell!  We were all able to relax,  drink  Pimms from the bar and eat our delicious barbecued food cooked by Em and Sam; it really was a quintessential English summer evening!  My husband enjoyed it more than any other play he had seen. The acting was outstanding and if anyone has a chance to see them whilst they are touring the south west, do go, it is really worth it! We loved it. Lets hope they will come back next again year. Can’t wait! Many thanks to Richard Wolfenden-Brown of The Plough Arts Centre for bringing the Miracle Theatre Company here.

Our next performances are ‘The Twits’ here on 1st August and ‘King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone’ on 14th August; the grandchildren are getting really excited. Then on 1st September ‘Private Lives’ by Noel Coward is coming, so it is all happening in the Abbey valley this summer.  All the details are on our website.Thank you to everyone who has come here so far and lets hope for lots more fun.

Believe it or not the gardens are looking wonderful. The hydrangeas have adored the rain and looking at their best. There are really deep blues, sparkling whites and some blackcurrant and raspberry colours. The shrubbery looks rather like a jungle with all the lush foliage and makes a great place to explore for children. The Walled Gardens are looking really good with the hot border in the vegetable garden looking vibrant. The vegetables are still on a go-slow but we have more lettuces and artichokes than we can eat despite having them every day! Visitors have only to ask Nigel as he has plenty to sell! I refuse to buy vegetables and Nigel says that we won’t have to wait much longer now! The sun is promised soon, we are told.