Postcard from Norfolk - Holkham Hall

What do you mean, ‘try something different’?

Here’s what happens when we visit Holkham Hall.  We rock up, we say it used to be better when you could park anywhere, we have a picnic lunch, we walk up to see the Duke, we take a photograph, we visit the gift shop, we decide we don’t need a tweed tea towel that costs thirty quid, we walk back to the car, we admire the deer on the drive out of the estate, we go for a drink at the Hoste.  What’s not to love?

This visit, though, heralded Change.  The kitchen garden is now open to the public.

Thanks to ‘Downton Abbey’, we now know that, prior to the existence of Ocado, feeding a household of a stately home required quite a lot of work.  The extent of the vegetable portion of the meals taken at the Hall, the vegetables in question presumably performing the vital function of soaking up the gravy covering the swan, badger, fox or whether it is that aristocrats eat, was revealed by the size of the gardens.  Picture an allotment the size of a footie pitch.  Of course, because the gardens were tended by members of the working class, it meant that they could also be neat and require a great deal of attention.

The gardens themselves were, actually, something of a delight.  Obviously pretty neglected for many years, they are now being restored, presumably prior to the launch of ‘Holkham Organics’.  They are also impressive.

When the aristocracy build a garden, they don’t start with a trip to B&Q, they start with a team of masons working for about a year on the walls around the place.  Whether this is to deter deer, rabbits or vegetarian poachers is not quite clear.  What is clear is that unless rabbits develop siege-warfare any time soon, they are not going to be getting in at the sprouts.

The next thing that is put in place are greenhouses.  Country folk these days bleat over polytunnels and solar farms, but a quick look over the wall would reveal that the Victorians knew a thing or two about vast glazed areas, and what they knew was that they liked wine, and to make wine you needed vine, so you needed a lot of greenhouse.

Between the icehouse and the greenhouse, no wonder so many great explorers of the age thought visits to the poles or the interiors was such a great idea, they could spend the morning acclimatising, the afternoon playing croquet and the evening having a seventy seven course banquet washed down with home-made plonk and then a bunk up with the maid or, if your tastes ran to rough, the under-gardener.  Shame with all their foresight nobody thought to get inoculate, but maybe a simpler age.

Obviously, having now seen the gardens and, perhaps more importantly, ridden on the little shuttle that takes you back to the Hall (like an oversized golf buggy for eight persons, or like a normal American golf buggy), any future trip will require a return visit there.

Because visiting the kitchen garden, that’s what you do when you visit Holkham Hall.

Norfolk notes - Holkham Hall

Holkham Hall is a large stately home. You don't get to own, and hold on to, a stately home these days unless you know a thing or two about business and it appears that they have finally got wise to people parking and having a picnic, enjoying the grounds and the view and even the benches, all for free.

So they have introduced a parking fee, cheekily redeemable at their shop or cafe. This means that having stumped up for parking you feel compelled to get value for money by blowing even more cash on coffee. Not this chap, I had my flask tea and was bloody well going to enjoy the view sitting on the...the bastards have removed the benches! There's nowhere to sit. Well, apart from in the rental car, obviously, putting down the middle seats to form a table and essentially having quite a passable dining experience.

But my plan next time is to turn up with the full pic nic rig. Chairs, folding table, hot and cold dishes, butler, the works. Well worth a couple of quid.

Actually I shouldn't gripe as they've reduced the cost of parking on the beach. The problem is that Holkham Beach is now the home of what can only be described as quite a lot of marshy type weed near the shore. And because it's probably protected or endangered then they can't just get rid of the stuff. So you have to detour around or squelch through it to get to the pristine beach...or walk from Wells, as we did one day.

One unlucky tourist wasn't walking anywhere. While we strolled a coastguard 4x4 retrieved a woman who had twisted her ankle. What surprised me was how precious the driver of the emergency vehicle was about getting his truck up the beach.


Maybe the beach buggers suspensions as efficiently as it does ankles, or maybe it was a new truck but you would rather hope that he would scream along the surf line and do one of those handbreak turn stops that shower onlookers with sand. The whole experience was like an incredibly crap version of Baywatch.