On a Rare Sunny Day

On Thursday, having watched both local and national weather forecasts, we decided that we would have a day out.  We set off with the intention of perhaps going to Lichfield calling at the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust's headquarters at the Wolseley Centre on the way.  It was the most beautiful morning and we wandered around the nature reserve and called into in the Visitor Centre for a cup of coffee. It was then we realised that we weren't far from the Shugborough Estate and that we had intended to make a return visit to see the island arboretum, the servant's quarters and the farm.  You may remember my posts from last year about the visit we made to the Essex Bridge at Great Haywood and later in the year to the newly opened Lord Lichfield's apartments in the Mansion House. So off we went to Shughborough.   As usual I took far too many photos and I think the farm and servants quarters deserve a post of their own so here, for now,  are just a few photos I took at both Wolseley and Shugborough of flowers, cats and rugs.

 Dark red poppy and .......

pale blue Scabious in the bee garden at Wolseley

 Clematis on the boat house at Shugborough.  I'm normally a bit nervous of boathouses.  It must be something to do with the low roofs and still, enclosed water but this one was so pretty......

 covered in roses and clematis

The dairymaid at the farm introduced us to a new recruit

Chip, one of the farm cats and below is

 

 Spud, the other farm cat.

In the Farmhouse and in the servant's dining room up at the Mansion House there were quite a few rag rugs on display.

There were also plenty of posters around offering courses in rag-rug making - I'd love to have a go!

I remember seeing these kind of rugs rugs at my grandma's house when I was a child.

I also remember grandma and granddad sitting at the huge kitchen table in front of the fire making them, each starting at opposite ends and meeting in the middle.  I think they had always done it and still made them even then. 

The rug above has the Stafford Knot on it.  The Knot is the traditional symbol of the County of Staffordshire and its county town of Stafford and is sometimes incorrectly called the Staffordshire Knot. 

The weather was perfect and we had a wonderful day just wandering around, seeing lovely things and talking to some friendly and interesting people including the staff in costume in the different rooms as they were waiting for the next school party to come around.  In all the rain on Friday it was hard to believe we had experienced such a perfect day just a day earlier.  I'll be back with photos of kitchens, trees and farm animals in my next post.