Day 9 - Wrest Park

Today we headed out to check out some landmarks in this great country of England.  We are now the owners of English Heritage cards which will get us into many different places throughout England as well as discounts to places throughout the UK. We can take up to 6 kids each with us so nephews and nieces need to come over! It is amazing how close places like this are to us and how beautiful they can be.  This is going to be a great "vacation" for our family and for those that visit.

Here are the photos of the day...

*Wrest Park*

                              The Gardens

                 This family loved their Dogs.  There are statues throughtout the estate.

                                                    Walking towards the Archers Pavillion

                                                                   Going up..... Or Down?

                                                                      Dog Cemetary

                                                                   Children's area

Official Information about The Park from Wikipedia:  Wrest Park


Wrest Park is a country estate located near Silsoe, Bedfordshire, England. It comprises Wrest Park, a Grade I listed country house, and Wrest Park Gardens, also Grade I listed, formal gardens surrounding the mansion

The present house was built in 1834-39, to designs by its owner the Thomas de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey, an amateur architect, the first president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, who was inspired by buildings he had seen on trips to Paris and based his house on designs published in French architectural books such as Jacques-François Blondel's Architecture Française (1752); the works were superintended as clerk of works on site by James Clephan,^[1] who had been clerk of the works at the Liddell seat, Ravensworth Castle, County Durham, and had recently performed as professional amanuensis and builder for Lord Barrington, whose house, Beckett Park, Berkshire, was designed by his brother-in-law, Tom Liddell, an amateur architect.^[2] Although Nikolaus Pevsner previously stated that Clephan was a French architect who designed the present house instead of De Grey the amateur architect, as Charles Read has shown in his biography of De Grey, Clephan (born Clapham) in fact only produced drawings of the service infrastructure, such as plumbing and drainage, rather than the decorative layout or features of the house, which were produced by De Grey's own hand.^[3]
Wrest has some of the earliest Rococo Revival interiors in England. Reception rooms in the house are open to the public.

Wrest Park has an early eighteenth century garden, spread over 92 acres,^[4] which was probably originally laid out by George London and Henry Wise for Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent, then modified by Capability Brown in a more informal landscape style.
The park is divided by a wide gravel central walk, continued as a long canal that leads to a Baroque style pavilion designed by Thomas Archer and completed in 1711. Boundary canals were altered to take the more natural shape by Capability Brown who worked there between 1758–60, and who also ringed the central formal area with a canal and woodland. The gardens and garden houses were mapped by John Rocquein 1735.^[5] During the later 18th and 19th centuries, the Bath House, an orangery and marble fountains were added

In 2007 English Heritage took control of restoring the house and gardens with the help of the Wolfson Foundation.  The foundation pledged up to £400,000 towards the restoration of the estate to help in redoing the mansion's formal entrance area, the garden statuary, railings and gates decoration and altering the height of the carriage drive. Other work was completed including the addition of the visitors center and cafe.  On August 4, 2011 the park opened to the public.