National Trust: Felbrigg Hall Garden & Estate

We spent a few hours touring around Felbrigg Hall, Garden & Estate yesterday. As a perk of my job is a National Trust family membership, so we’re taking advantage and trying to take in some of these amazing places all over the UK & Scotland, starting with the closest ones – Felbrigg, Blickling & Sheringham Park and then just a little bit further way is Oxbourgh Hall, the moated manor house looks really cool to explore.

The Hall itself is considered one of the most elegant country houses in East Anglia. Their site goes on to say that it is a place of surprises and delights… a mixture of opulence and homeliness… Soren and I both really liked the dining room and today when we talked about our visit, he told us he really liked the Eagle killing the Pigeon. Took me a second, but I remembered in their Bird Wall they had hundreds of taxidermy birds and one of them was just that – a recreation of a prey bird eating a pigeon. I didn’t take a photo of that, but did the owls.

For kids 3 & 5, they did rather well doing the self-guided walk through the Hall. It helped that Soren had a flip chart where he was to spot something in each room. For example, the first card read, “D for Dogs” In the first room, he’d have to find and count all the dogs. Some were in paintings, others on a pillow cushion – and he did well, found them all. Also in each room, they had little boxes of things for the kids. In one room, they had a kaleidoscope and some opera glasses. After about a dozen rooms or so, they had enough so we moved along to have our picnic and then off to the garden area.

The parkland is 520 acres of amazing open fields, neat trees, fences, and just beautiful scenery. Looking forward to exploring it.

The picnic lasted for about 10 minutes, until wasps were around us. Not sure why, but it seemed that no one else was having the problem… Later I thought perhaps there was a nest in the tree or under the table – which would explain why it was the only picnic table vacant! Anyway, we quickly ate what we could and went off into the lovely Garden area which features a kids area, allotments, wildflowers, walled garden, animals like two peacocks, various chickens and a beekeeping section. It was really a lovely spot and we’ll surely be coming back.

The kids made their way to the cool kids’ area. It was really heaven for our two dirt & water lovers. They used shoves, dug holes, poured water in the dirt to make mud, watered plants & flowers, drove around the wheel barrow and then didn’t want to leave.

I wandered around taking some photos of flowers, butterflies, bees and various birds like a fluffy chicken and two peacocks.

It was a really lovely place and glad we stopped there… looking forward to coming back.
On Wednesday they have a Chili Fest – perhaps something fun for me & the kids? Will look it up and see what it is all about…. it says it is free.

Share this:

Like this:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply