My intro to Chastleton House, Summer 2015: A snippet from my National Trust notebook

In the summer of 2015, Daphne & I began visiting the places I chose to illustrate in my National Trust book, 'The Country House Colouring Book'. I often write a few lines describing a place, I think its important to have a record of my perspective in words as well as art. Here is a note from my little NT book..................

'A long, whinding, unassuming road takes you to Chastleton, through the hedgerow I spot the Medieval parkland with its dotted-about oaks stretching far and wide. There's something majestic about landscape of this period, I almost find myself waiting in anticipation for the thundering hooves of returning courtiers at the Tudor court.

I'm relieved its parking area lacks tarmac and is just turf and thistles with copses of trees, rather like arriving at a small and funky festival on a farm, accept on this Oxfordshire hill, grass hopper legs rattle instead of trembling fat beats.

I head for the gate; to my right there are three concrete posts with retro plaques on with a bicycle symbol, they're wonky and no longer upright, I know the feeling. Me aside, these 1960's posts are the first hint I have at restoration being made lightly here, no frills, just the most necessary preservation.

Going through a pedestrian five-bar gate, the dots of oaks now eclypse the blinding bright blue sky and their anatomy simply a multitude of low-jolly dancing-about arms waving and beckoning you down a long, curved directing path.

I recognise the dovecot peering over a thistled brow; its rich limestone almost tropical with four sides bleeding tangerine in the most extreme of midday English summer sun. Sheep are chattering away; I wonder if they're disgruntled that we in the end, turned to Europe for the manufacture of cloth, putting an end to a trade so rich, an industry that made pastures greener, that gave us Chastleton, domestic architecture flamboyantly designed to speak of status and wealth. The voice of architecture was founded, as man had once been tempted by the Garden of Eden, he now with fortune found the supply of decadent, bright and buttery Cotswold earth core irresistable. Chastleton, like much of Cotswold architecture, looks as if it has erupted out of the ground, its pantone more than harmoneous with its dense green surroundings. In bright sun, it's too like a yummy cake topped with fine intricately decorated iced-gems. '

AJ