Newby Hall and the lovely City of York

Started today with a drive of about an hour to Newby Hall near Ripon in North Yorkshire.

I was expecting a manor house with an exhibition of doll’s houses and was blown away by such a fine house and beautiful gardens in a rural setting.

The house is one of Britain’s finest ‘Adam’ houses and home to Mr & Mrs Richard Compton. An exceptional example of 18th century interior decoration, it was built in the 1690’s by Sir Christopher Wren. It was later enlarged and adapted by John Carr and subsequently John Adam. We were not allowed to take photos inside the house and they had sold out of information books so I couldn’t get photos for the blog.

It is open to the public and holds various events and garden days to keep the property financially viable. Lovely place for families to visit as it has a miniature railway for rides, boat rides on the river and a quite extensive exhibition of doll’s houses. The gardens would keep any keen gardener happy for hours. In fact in 2019 it won Christie’s ‘Garden of the Year Award’.

We did a guided house tour and the very learned guides explained about the building and Robert Adam’s contributions as well as the Compton family history. When talking about the various family portraits the guide explained that it was more expensive to have arms, legs and hands etc. included rather than just the head and shoulders. This gave rise to the expression of ‘costing an arm and a leg’.

We decided to drive to York and have lunch there before our look about the place.

Not far into the town we saw a nice cafe, ‘Baileys’, so we just had to go there. I had an open sandwich but Candice saw ‘Giant Yorkshire Pudding with chips and peas’ so went local.

Spent a couple of hours walking about the shops and shambles. Bought the boys gifts to take home - the shops are very nice here and not as expensive as London.

Had a cuppa and cake at the famous ‘Betty’s Tea Rooms’ and just as we were about to leave it started to rain. After carrying umbrella’s around everywhere and never needing them, of course we didn’t have them today. I had an old 1950’s plastic fold up rain bonnet in my bag which I take on every holiday and never use. With much hilarity I managed to get it on. No-one (apart from Candice) seemed to notice although I had a few smiles from elderly ladies.Read more