Stourhead

We went to visit the gardens at Stourhead. Stourhead is another big manor like Chatsworth. Apparently back in the days that it was very cool to have an enormous, palatial house that passed from generation to generation it was also very vogue to have massive grounds that were designed to look like ‘artful wilderness.’ At least, that’s what I’ve been learning in my humanities class this semester. Stourhead is such a place. The ‘gardens’ were much more like a large city park, complete with a lake and several small Greek temples. It was really breathtaking. We were there for a few hours walking around. I think I wouldn’t mind a yard like that someday, as long as someone else was responsible for maintaining the landscape and feeding the swans.

They filmed the proposal scene in the most recent Pride and Prejudice (you know, the one with the rain and all the yelling) at Stourhead in a little stone building called Apollo’s Temple. Picture this: forty girls streaming off a bus toward know location of sappy, chick-flick scene. Giggles and gossip filled the air. Excitement was almost tangible as girls contemplated the reality that they would soon be standing where Keira Knightly stood. And then we saw it. The scaffolding. Yes, that’s right. The British National Trust is currently restoring Apollo’s Temple. Words cannot describe the agony that filled our souls and penetrated clear to the cores of our very beings. How dare they be so selfish and ruin our vacation in such a heartless way? Don’t worry, I hiked to it anyway to take a sad picture of me with the inaccessible, scaffolding covered building in the background. Not that it would be the same without an attractive, rain-drenched man proposing marriage to me, but still.