We Are Open!

Today Ashdown House opens for the 2015 season! Opening hours are 2pm - 5pm every Wednesday and Saturday. The house is open by timed tour only at 2.15,3.15 and 4.15pm.

Here are a few of the highlights of a visit to this most unusual of NT properties (and yes we may be biased but we think it is fabulous!):

The Landscape. The Sarsen Field is the first thing you see on the left of the drive as you approach the car park. This is open to everyone to walk in and is a fascinating are of Special Scientific Interest where the huge, ancient sarsen stones lie amongst the grass as they have done for thousands of years. Legend says they are an army turned to stone by the magician Merlin.

High on the hill to the east is the weathercock. If you fancy a climb up onto the Downs this gives a

wonderful panoramic view of the park and the surrounding countryside.

The woodland dates back to when this was a medieval hunting ground and the deer still live here.

Landscaped in the 17th century, the woods are full of walks and glades where you can picnic and play and catch sight of the wildlife. The badgers have been digging up the area around the grand avenue for almost 1000 years! There are also hidden geocaches, a tree trail and our Pixie Path. In the fields behind the wood the Balleroy ponies graze.

To the west of the park lies Alfred's Castle, an Iron Age encampment. Smaller than Uffington and Liddington forts it nevertheless commands a wonderful view and at one time controlled the track south from the Ridgeway. Anglo Saxon weapons have been found here; legend states it was the place where King Alfred rallied his army before the Battle of Ashdown in 871 AD.

The house. A stunning 17th century hunting lodge, Ashdown is

well worth a view for the  architecture alone. Of the interior, only the hall, grand staircase and roof terrace of the house are open to visitors because the rooms are privately let. However the wonderful

guided tour weaves the story of Ashdown and its owners over the three hundred and fifty years since it was built. From Queens and cavaliers to Victorian servants, the characters come alive!

We hope to see you soon!

On the Edge of the Wood

On a stormy day like today you can hear the wind roaring in the trees as soon as you step into the Ashdown woods. Although the eastern flank of the wood is protected from gales, if you cross the main avenue and head west towards the edge of the trees you enter a wilder place altogether. Here, as you follow the path around the edge of the 13th century park pale, you catch a view of the house lying to the south, looking deceptively peaceful in the sunshine.

Once you climb the stile, however, and head out

across the paddock towards Alfred's Castle Iron Age fort, the wind hits you with the strength to catch your breath and steal it away. Here the grass is grazed short by the Balleroy ponies. It's fortunate they are from Scottish Highland stock or they would be shivering out here on the exposed western flank of the hillside. Alfred's Castle might not be as huge or impressive as the forts at Uffington or Barbury or a dozen other places along the Ridgeway but this was a strategic point for the rulers that controlled this land, a vantage point giving the view south as well as northward to the old straight track. The sarsen stones of the ramparts - those that are left and are not buried beneath Ashdown House - peep through the rough grass. It's a place with an ancient feel to it that has never been worn away.

When I stand on the edge of Alfred's Castle I'm always reminded of the poem On Wenlock Edge by A E Housman, a different wood and a different county but a similar sensation of the past melding into the present. Alfred's Castle is a place where you can stand and dream - until the wind buffets you back towards the wood again and the trees close around you and offer shelter.

Do you have a favourite place where the past and present meet and where you go to stand and dream?

The A-Z of Ashdown

Today we are starting a new feature on the blog, an A-Z of Ashdown covering various aspects historical, geographical, mythical and others that defy categorisation! I did consider doing a reverse alphabet and starting with Z but I think there will probably be a few letters we'll be scraping around to find topics for and Z is probably one of them. So I'll start with A, which has a number of potential Ashdown-related topics.

First there is Ashdown - the physical location, the "down covered in ash trees" which features in the Anglo-Saxon records as the generic name for the entire line of the Downs. This was the site of the Battle of Ashdown and local tradition places the battle on the land between Alfred's Castle and the Bronze Age Barrows to the south (more of them when we get to B!)

Then there is Ashdown House itself and Alfred's Castle, the Iron Age settlement. There is also the historic village of Ashbury, of which Ashdown became the "big house" in 1662. Ashbury has its own 15th century manor house, an ancient church, parts of which go back to the Norman period, and lots of other interesting historical features. It definitely deserves a blog piece.

There is also the airfield. During the Second World War there was an airfield to the north of the Mile Drive, by Red Barn Cottages. It ran east to west and there is still a gap in the trees where it cut through that is visible from the path that runs down from the Ridgeway to Red Barn. Parts of the old metal
interlocking landing strip can apparently be seen in the garden of Old Forge in Ashbury. British, American and Canadian troops were stationed at Ashdown (more on them when we reach W!) and they flew Spitfires and Mustangs out of the airfield (this is attested to by the paintings of Spitfires and Mustangs that were found on the walls of the drawing room after the troops had left. There was also a lifesize painting of Rita Hayworth!) There was a canteen at Red Barn and some of the crockery is still being dug up out of the fields whenever they are ploughed.

Local people remember two plane crashes at Ashdown. The first was a Mustang that caught fire as it was coming in to land. The second was when a plane that was landing at the airfield collided with a motorcyclist on the B4000. There are various memories of the Second World War recorded as part of the Ashbury Living History Project. We don't have much written information on the role of the Ashdown airfield so if anyone knows anything of Ashdown's wartime history, please get in touch!

Diamond Jubilee Beacons

On the night of Monday 4th June four thousand beacons will be lit across the UK to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Locally, there will be a beacon lit at the top of Ashbury Coombe at 10pm and another at White Horse Hill.

The lighting of beacons across the UK has a history spanning centuries. Used in the past as a means of communication and warning in times of war, the beacon chain has also become a sign of unity and celebration.

The records of the Ashbury estate make reference to the beacon built in 1588 to warn of the coming of the Spanish Armada. In those days there was an Armada beacon on Alfred's Castle hillfort, one in a long line stretching along the Ridgeway and south to the coast. In those days the men responsible for watching and waiting and for lighting the beacon if necessary lived at Red Barn. Although Red Barn Cottages have been demolished now they were occupied into the 20th century and for many years housed the gamekeepers who worked on the Ashdown estate, in particular the Jones family.

It is inspiring to think of the history of beacons along the Ridgeway, no doubt stretching back thoousands of years, and the way that the celebration on Monday night connects us to the past.

The Lost Battle

Today for your pleasure a historical mystery... It's not unusual for the site of an ancient battle to be disputed, unknown for certain in the present day, and the location of the Battle of Ashdown, which took place in January 871AD, has long given rise to discussion. From Compton, near Streatley on the River Thames, to Uffington Castle and various other points east, the Battle of Ashdown has been mooted to have taken place in several places that fit the somwhat vague geographical description given is Asser's life of King Alfred: that of a place where the Danes held the high ground and there was a lone thorn tree. Sadly this doesn't really narrow the field a great deal.

As a brief background: In 870, the Danes embarked on an invasion of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex. They sailed up the Thames and came ashore at Maidenhead in Berkshire. Moving inland, they captured Reading and began fortifying the site as their base. The Danish commanders, Kings Bagsecg and Halfdan Ragnarsson, were supported by five Earls. They met considerable resistance from Aethelwulf the Earl of Berkshire, who was backed up by King Ethelred of Wessex and his younger brother, Alfred. After initial successes Ethelred planned an assault on the Danes' camp at Reading but was unable to break through the defences and was driven back to the Berkshire Downs. The Danes, seeing an opportunity now to crush the Saxons and take Wessex, rode out from Reading with the bulk of their army to take on the Saxons on the Berkshire Downs. Where did this encounter occur?

Local legend tells of Alfred riding to Blowingstone Hill near Kingston Lisle to use the ancient sarsen blowing stone to call all men to battle. He then mustered his forces at "Alfred's Castle" the Iron Age hill fort west of Ashdown House, joined with his brother's troops who had been encamped at Hardwell Camp, and rode to do battle with the Danes at nearby Uffington Castle. All well and good, but other sources place the site of the battle elsewhere on the Berkshire Downs, at Compton, near East Ilsley, and in other places to the east, along the Ridgeway, closer to the Thames and to Reading. No one knows for certain... One could say that the clue is in the name but during the Saxon period the word "Ashdown" referred to the entire expanse of the Berkshire Downs.

Recently I read a fascinating and cogently argued article by the late local historian Peter Knott that drew on field names and other local evidence to place the Battle of Ashdown to the south west of Ashbury village, along the escarpment that borders the Ridgeway. Up until the mid-eighteenth century this escarpment was too steep to cultivate for crops; even now the steepest inclines are covered in trees. Ancient records identify this area of land as called "The Wayte," a name that can be traced back to usage in the 13th century. Margaret Gelling, in "The Place Names of Berkshire" gives the meaning of the wayte as a look out place, but an alternative is given in the Oxford English Dictionary: an ambush. This meaning is still in use today in the form of "lying in wait." Could this be a record in a place name, a piece of land where the Saxon lookouts patrolled and Alfred's army lay in wait for the Danes as they marched out of Reading?

One of the most intriguing aspects of the case is the reference in a charter of 947AD to a place near Ashbury called Rammesburi or The Ravens' Fort. This raven is the familiar of Woden, the Teutonic god of war and death. It also has sinister connections in literature as a bird that haunts battlefields. Today the location of the Ravens' Fort is lost, but we know from the charter that it lay on the boundary of Ashbury lands. Could the Ravens' Fort have been named in memory of the Battle of Ashdown? As a final twist, ravens are birds that habitually nest in the same places that they have inhabited for centuries. Today there are ravens on Weathercock Hill, to the east of Ashdown...

"Alfred moved his army against the enemy... The opposing armies clashed violently... The Vikings took ignominious flight, and many thousands were slain over the whole broad expanse of Ashdown..." Asser.

The Ghosts of Ashdown Past!

The beautiful, warm sunny day today has drawn scores of visitors to Ashdown House and Park. The woods are at their best with rich autumn colours and although the house is open for a final time on Saturday October 31st, the park and estate will remain open all through the winter.

Saturday is, of course, Halloween, and if you are planning to visit I recommend the 4.15pm tour. By then the light will be starting to fade and as you walk through the woods at dusk and see the shadow of the house creeping across the lawns it will be all to easy to believe the stories of hauntings at Ashdown. The wind in the trees and the birds calling in the twilight can sound like the plaintive cries of the child who is said to haunt the woods. The long shadows of the stable hide the beams where a groom is said to have hanged himself in Victorian times.

I've had a number of paranormal experiences in my life but two of the nicest (in the sense that they weren't frightening!) happened to me at Ashdown. They were also two of the most convincing since they were witnessed by other people too, amongst them my ever-sceptical husband!

The first occasion was when we were taking the photograph that appears at the top of this blog, the partial eclipse of the moon one night over the roof of Ashdown House. We were standing on Alfred's Castle, in itself a compellingly atmospheric site. There was no one in the house and no lights were on. All the windows were shuttered. And yet as we stood there watching the full moon rise and the eclipse take a bite out of it, we both thought that we saw the figure of a woman standing in an upstairs window watching us.

The second time that the ghosts of Ashdown past sent a shiver down my spine, we were on a bat walk in the woods at night. About ten of us had gone out to look for bats and listen to their high-pitched calls as they hunted through the woods. We had seen the barn owls as well, hunting their prey along the rides, and as we walked back down the North Avenue the house was ahead of us. Again, there was no one there, no lights on and it was locked up for the night. Yet as we walked towards it we saw a soft golden light like candle or lamplight shining behind the windows of the first floor, and as we all watched, the light moved up the stairs to the next landing and we saw the shadow of a woman. As we drew near the house the light faded away and we were all taken aback to see that again the windows were all closed with the shutters, so how could it have been possible for us to see a light inside?

Field of Dreams

To the south of Ashdown Park is a walk that takes you straight back into history. It begins, prosaically enough, in a layby near the water pumping station where you go through a gate into what I call the Field of Dreams. It's a bit like the Secret Garden; on one side you're standing by the road to Lambourn. On the other you're in Deep History.

On your right the remains of the medieval Park Pale of the Ashdown deer park sweep down the hillside, still imposing after hundreds of years. The park pale was erected in the Middle Ages when Ashdown was a hunting chase belonging to Glastonbury Abbey. It consists of a bank and ditch and in places it is still five feet wide and several feet high. Originally there would have been a paling fence on the top too high for a deer to leap.

As you cross the field, the remains of what look like a small camp come into view on your left. Some antiquarian books record this as a Roman fort although I have never been able to discover any details about it or find it on any maps. It's true that there were a number of Roman villas scattered across this part of the Downs, one of which was built into the centre of the Iron Age hillfort at Alfred's Castle. The current road along the Downs beneath the Ridgeway, the Portway, was a Roman Road to the major settlement at Wanborough. So it's possible there might have been a small fort nearby. As is the case with Alfred's Castle, you can see what look like banks and gateways, ditches, entrances and possibly the outline of internal walls.

A little further away across the field is an enormous barrow with a sarsen stone on the top and a ring of what I at first thought were sarsens around the base. On closer inspection they turned out to be tree stumps that looked almost petrified and I wondered if this had once been a site like Waylands Smithy that the Victorians had prettified by adding a ring of trees to complement the rugged beauty of the stones.

As you walk on across the wheat field you have a magnificent view of the park pale ascending the escarpment of Ashdown Upper Wood, a mysterious and ancient woodland with trees up to eight hundred years old and abundant wildlife. The path leads directly to a line of three Bronze Age barrows on the top of the hill. This was a Bronze Age tribal boundary and there are actually four barrows but one of them was sunken and now it is a pool in the winter. As you stand on the top of the hill looking at the sun on the gold dome of Ashdown House you can feel the years roll back. This is a place to come to dream.

King Arthur's Castle?

Although the history of Ashdown Park naturally focuses around the house that stands there today and the Craven family who built and lived in it, there are many other fascinating aspects of both history and legend in the local Ridgeway countryside.

The 200 years following the official withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain in 410AD are known as the Dark Ages, the least well documented in the recorded history of the British Isles. The inhabitants of Britain were Romanized to some extent, especially in urban centres but by blood and by tradition they were primarily Celtic. Under the Romans, local chieftains had played an active role in the government of the territory, and some of these leaders took up the reins after the Roman officials were gone. Vortigern, who declared himself Hugh King of Britain in 425AD hired Saxon mercenaries and granted them land in payment for their services. By 440AD the Saxons had rebelled and were demanding more land and territory. Tradition and legend have it that a succession of Romano-British leaders rallied the population against Saxon raids and that one, Arthur, succeeded in defeating them at Mons Badonicus, the Battle of Badon Hill.

Where was Badon Hill? There are no contemporary records about the battle and precious little legend other than that it lasted for three days and nights. The site has been located all over Britain but a strong contender is Baydon, four miles from Ashdown. For a start the clue is in the name. It is an uncommon name – there is no other place in England called Badon or Baydon. But was it called Badon as far back as the 5th century? A medieval reference to it in the Salisbury charters refers to it in the Latin form Beidona and states that the origin of the name derives from Old English “Beg-dun” meaning a down or hill once noted for the berries gathered there. Gildas, writing in the 6th century, also Latinized the name as Mons Badonicus and Bede followed him.

Then there is location. The Saxons controlled the Thames just as the Danes would do five hundred years later when Alfred the Great defeated them at the Battle of Ashdown. The hill-forts that had originated centuries before show archaeological evidence of occupancy in the fifth and sixth centuries, suggesting they were used to evade and hold off the invading Saxon tribes. If the Romano-British forces held the great Ridgeway forts of Uffington Castle and Liddington Hill, then Baydon, on a ridge of high ground between the two would be an ideal place to stand and fight. And the link with Ashdown Park? Just to the west of the park pale, within sight of the house, stands the Iron Age hillfort of Alfred’s Castle. It is equidistant between Uffington and Liddington and it guards the approach to the Ridgeway from the south, beneath the Baydon Ridge.

If Baydon was the site of Arthur’s Battle of Badon Hill, should Alfred’s Castle more properly be re-named Arthur’s Castle?

Things you CAN do at Ashdown Park!

Ashdown House and Park opened for the 2009 season at the beginning of April and I'm looking forward very much to taking my first tour round on Saturday April 11th. Recently a number of people have siad to me that they had considered visiting Ashdown but decided against it because there wasn't much of the house that was open to the public. This got me thinking - Instead of emphasising all the things you CAN'T do at Ashdown, why not point out all the wonderful things that you CAN do, which all go to prove what a fabulous place it is for a visit. So here goes:

1. You can go on a guided tour of the outside of the house, the hallway, staircase, cupola and roof and hear the story of the Craven family, owners of Ashdown. Trust me, it's worth the tour for the view alone which is said to be the best in three counties. Also if you like dolls houses you have to see Ashdown - lots of dolls houses are modelled on it!

2. You can visit the information centre where there are, amongst other things, interpretation boards for the house and the estate, a costume display, a timeline, a wonderful album of the pictures taken by the pioneering photographer William, 2nd Earl of Craven in the mid-nineteenth century, and lots of knowledgeable guides who can tell you all about the fascinating history of the place.

3. You can view the very fine seventeenth century portrait collection on display in the house, the dreadfully uncomfortable footmens' chairs and... um... the fascinating collection of early carved stag heads!

4. You can stroll in the formal parterre and gardens or wander through the woodlands, which are the remains of the medieval hunting forest. There you may see a huge variety of wildlife - birds of prey and woodland birds, deer, foxes even badgers - and beautiful flowers - primroses and woodland anemones at this time of year, and carpets of bluebells in a few weeks time.

5. You can visit the "lost" village of Ashdown, once a thriving community supporting the estate, where the marvellous Victorian stables still stand on the village green with a very cute weather vane on the top sporting an earl's coronet!

6. You can climb Weathercock Hill and walk along footpaths that take you all over the estate, including past three Bronze Age barrows and along the medieval park pale, originally designed to keep the deer within the hunting grounds. You can also see the Sarsen Field, a site of special scientific interest where there are stones with holes in them that were created by the roots of palm trees... If only we had that sort of weather now!

7. You can visit Alfred's Castle, the Iron Age Hill Fort built on the site of an earlier Roman Villa, reputedly the site of the Battle of Ashdown where King Alfred defeated the Danes in AD 871. Some very friendly horses live there!

8. Nearby on the ancient Ridgeway is Wayland's Smithy, an impressive neolithic burial chamber and Uffington Castle, White Horse Hill and Dragon Hill where Saint George, the patron saint of England, allegedly slew the dragon. No grass has grown where the dragon's blood fell ever since. Local legend also states that on the full moon the horse comes down off the hill to graze in the valley below...

9. You can follow the Michael and Mary Ley Line which passes through Ashdown, making it part of the mystical landscape.

10. When you've done all that you can go to the Rose and Crown Inn in the historic village of Ashbury for a delicious cream tea!!

Oh, and don't believe the National Trust handbook when it says there are no WC facilities at Ashdown House - there are!! Now, you have to admit that sounds like a very nice day out, doesn't it!