Ingestre Hall Summer open day

Great time out at Ingestre Hall which is rarely open, it used to belong to the Chetwund family, and Earls of Shrewsbury, then in the 70s it was leased out to sandwell council and it was neglected. Slowly it is being bought back to life.

The imposing gateway and entrance

Inside there were about 40 craft stalls. we bought a glass angel and a silk printed vw camper van picture.

 This is Ingestre hall from the back of the house, still a striking aspect overlooking fields.

In the fields the sheep graze

 This is called the long garden and has only recently been cleared of its wild growth by volunteers, in fact from old photos you could not see anything but weeds and trees, no steps, nothing to note a walkway was there, now it is coming back to life.

This is the orangery, also sadly in need of neglect with a fig tree that was nearly through the roof when it was tended to by volunteers and now you can walk in and look at what could happen to this space in the future, they have done a fantastic job.

Inside the orangery all is cleared of debris.

The grounds were designed in the 17th century by James athenian stuart.

Now moving on we went to Ingestres famous Wren attributed curch, St Mary the Virgin.

 St Mary the virgin church at Ingestre, attributed to Christopher Wren who designed St Pauls cathedral in London.

 Here is Gary reading the epitaphs on the walls inside the church by the Altar, I took this one of him whilst he wasnt looking

 Oh this was just my most favourite piece of stained glass in the whole of the church it reminded me of a William Morris design with the orangery in the background.

 This stained glass is also beautiful and was put up by the family for their mother in rembrance of her.

Now here is me rather triumphant after climbing up to the tower of the church to see the bellringing room. This rather wonderful lady led me up and encouraged me up the winding old stone staircase. I hung onto the rope at the side of the wall.This was not on the agenda of the church visit, so we were thrilled to get a look, I got chatting to her and one thing led to another and the next thing I was encouraged up to not only see the bell ropes but hear some of the bells rung. Made mine and Garys day indeed.