A day at Mottisfont House and Gardens

A few weekends ago we met up with some friends at Mottisfont House and Gardens in Hampshire. Entry was free with our National Trust membership cards and we had a great day out exploring the house and gardens. The weather wasn’t great (ok, it rained on and off all day) but it didn’t stop us from spending an insane amount of time outside.

Mottisfont House is a former Augustinian priory set beside the River Test with an amazing park and garden. The park has ancient trees and an eighteenth century summer house. The Lime Walk was designed by Geoffrey Jellicoe in 1936. The Rose Garden, planted by Graham Stuart Thomas with pre-1900 shrub roses, is in the old kitchen garden.

There are lots of parts to the house and we all enjoyed exploring it from the ancient Cellarium and kitchens to the maids rooms in the attic. I love looking round country houses and there was an interesting exhibition called Discovering Britain: the Shell Heritage Art Collection.

Mottisfont House is well known for the beautiful room decorated by the artist Rex Whistler. It was as breathtaking as I hoped it would be and well worth visiting. We also enjoyed looking out for some of the ‘secrets’ of the house, such as the mosaics by Russian artist Boris Anrep.

There was so much to see and do. We also loved exploring the famous Walled Rose Garden but the children loved the Boggy Climbing on the Wild Play trail and the Pump, Pool and Paddle area.

They didn’t care about the weather but I wish we had been more prepared with towels and spare clothes!

We love our National Trust days out and this is definitely one we would recommend!