Wrest Park - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This is Wrest Park in Bedfordshire, one of the less well known English Heritage sites, and one of our favourite walking and picnic spots.
This view southwards from the "new" house (begun in 1834) shows the main vista down to the The Long Water, with the Pavilion in the far distance.
The "old" house was situated about halfway between the new one and The Long Water - if you walk there then you can still see the outline of its foundations as bumps in the grass.
Because the house was effectively moved backwards, the newer developments in the foreground were added while leaving the framework of the original 18th Century gardens in the distance still largely intact.
Around The Long Water in the picture above you can see the Woodland Garden, designed for getting pleasantly lost in.
Looking south-east from the house...
Walking south from the house, just before you get to The Long Water, you come to an area dedicated to Croquet, that most English of games (invented by the French).
Walking south-west from the house you come to the Orangery. Inside there are now café tables and chairs where you can picnic in bad weather, as well as interesting historical stuff. (No café though - Wrest Park doesn't have any of those, although it does have a shop in the house where you can buy drinks.)
If you head south from the Orangery you come to the Bowling Green House, reminiscent of a small Italian railway station.
It was originally intended as a Tea Room.
Alongside the bowling green is one of the mini-canals, this one called The Leg O'Mutton Lake, running east-west.
Through the back (or front) door of the Bowling Green House is the western edge of the grounds...
...go through the door, turn left, and you are walking along the naturalistic canal developed by Capability Brown that loops nearly all around the Woodland Garden, forming a pleasant boundary to the Park for much of its perimeter.
Originally the canal was formal and laid out in straight lines; Capability Brown softened it to a curving waterway that looks like a natural river.
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