We had a lovely - albeit brief - wander around Forde Abbey last week on our way to my secondary school reunion. Our visit was only brief due to our schedule - we could have spent much longer there in the beautiful gardens, teamed with lovely sunshine.
New entrance to Forde Abbey
When you arrive at Forde Abbey now, situated on the Somerset/Dorset border, you'll notice some temporary signage about changes being in progress, and a building which used to be where you entered having building work carried out. From Spring 2025, rather than this be the ticket office, it will be the tea room. The big deal about this is that currently the tea room is within the main building, meaning you can't get to it without paying admission to the gardens. By it moving to this spot, you'll be able to enjoy the tea room without paying to enter the grounds.
The new ticket office will be part of the main building, meaning you'll also be able to wander around the impressive kitchen garden - which currently includes some rather wonderful sculpture by Robert James.
The blue plastic sheet in this photo shows where the entrance to the new ticket office will be. As you can imagine, planning permission on a historic building like this is a big deal, but as they're re-opening a space where a door used to be many moons ago, it got the go ahead. The previous door, it ends up, was actually quite ornate, so careful work is currently being undertaken to preserve all those details.
Looking back across the lawns from the ha-ha, the Abbey really is the most impressive building. We've been trying to make the most of our National Trust membership this year and we really haven't seen a building on those travels which matches the Abbey in granduer and ornate architecture; it's no wonder it's often used in tv and film. Meanwhile the gardens which have evolved over 900 years (and continue to do so) are a mixture of the kitchen gardens (the Abbey grow a lot of their own produce, and is where I'd go strawberry picking as a child), manicured lawns, trees, flower beds, lakes and a bog garden - with many of the plants being of a very impressive scale (see below!). Garden enthusiasts can read more about the gardens in detail here, but as someone who just likes a walk around pretty surroundings with things to look at, the Abbey definately ticks my boxes.
The kids headed straight for The Swirl; based on a Penitential Spiral which Monks would use for meditation, you can walk into one spiral and out of another without ever overlapping where you've walked. It's planted with 10,000 tulips in Spring, which are replaced with wildflowers for Summer and Autumn.
Forde Abbey is home to a 160 feet (49m) tall water fountain, the tallest in England. It's currently on for 15 minutes, twice a day, at 12:30pm and 2:30pm. Apparently the force of the water - as it needs to have quite a push to get that high - sends a lot of spray out and was starting to erode the edges of the Mermaid Pond that it sits in, hence not being able to be on all of the time. Plus, depending on the wind, it could kinda feel like it was raining slightly around and abouts, which no one needs all day!
During October half term, Forde Abbey hold Pumpkin Rolling - where you buy a pumpkin from their gardens and roll them down these hills (shown below). Just roll it down the hill as many times as you like, and take it home when you're done! Tickets are £5 plus the cost of your pumpkin. The pumpkin that rolls the furthest, wins!
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