Lanhydrock … hmmm … carceral monstrosity that it is.
National Trust Central for Cornwall … Busy with people (heaving in the season) entranced, seduced and deluded by the Downton Abbey life of the previous owners … let’s be honest: the weird, sickly, devout and yet totally bent Agar-Robartes. Creepy bunch of fuckers.
The Jacobean home of the Earls of Radnor, acquired in the dissolution, was razed by righteous fire in 1881 and rebuilt as an insane asylum for their feeble bug-eyed children.
But, if you avoid the grim house they built, the gardens and estate the NT have created are actually quite beautiful … and quite free just at the moment, if you sneak around the proscribed routes — pay and display soon to demonise, criminalise and fuck up that particular bit of sharing with the community.
And perfect in the spring with rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias, daffs and crocus, views softened by the haze …
But there’s no getting away from the devil’s spawn who built this bastion of privilege …
A lovely wander in fact … ho hum.
