The castle was deliberately and carefully ruined to create a focal point for the garden which was designed to resemble a landscape painting, with drama, variety and rough edges. Inside the castle the ruined walls are home to a fabulous display of flowers, with wisteria and climbing roses scrambling over its arches and empty window frames. It is probably the most popular of subjects amongst amateur artists and on any sunny day you will find numerous easels arranged along the bank of the wide castle moat, the early birds having snapped up the best positions for light and dramatic effect, while numerous dragonflies flit up and down and skim over the water as they hunt incredible speed and agility.
The walks all start at the same point (note you only have to pay admission to the property if you intend to visit the house or castle, as the walks begin outside along the drive from the car park), with the initial section sweeping in a long curve through the parkland with its venerable oaks and wonderful views across open pasture and distant wooded hills. This part of the walk forms the old carriage drive, designed in the 1820’s by Edward Hussey III to show off the various aspects of the estate to visitors, who would have trundled across the stone edifice of Sweetbourne Bridge on their way to the house.
As well as native pine the woods also contain large areas of both hazel and sweet chestnut coppice. The hazel is sheltered under the broadleaf woodland and is the perfect habitat for dormice. The sweet chestnut is harvested on a 14-year cycle and the track passes beside an area of woodland slope that has been recently cut, the coppice stools already throwing up masses of new growth that will form a future harvest. Once cut the wood is stacked and allowed to season for a year, after which it is used for fencing and hop poles or is chipped to provide fuel. The timber sits staked just beyond the coppice area in great log piles either side of an access track that allows for easy extraction. Behind the stacked timber another area of chestnut coppice is close to being ready to harvest, all part of a traditional method of woodland management that has provided a sustainable source of timber over many centuries.
Conditions for the itinerant workers, as these buildings prove, could be very basic, the work simple but hard, the hours were long, job security was non-existent and the pay was poor – it was said by experienced hop pickers that as far as pay was concerned there was no worse form of employment and even in the 1930s it was still virtually impossible for a hop picker to earn as much as a pound in a 60 hour week, even when the measurer could be trusted to be fair - but these 2 weeks were often the highlight of the year and are remembered with great fondness by those who were children at the time, although it may well be one of those activities that is only deemed to be great fun once they are over. This working hop farm that the path goes through would bring back many memories to those who spent their childhood summers here.
Row after row of hop vines, forming tall green tunnels, are ready for harvesting, although today this is done by machine rather than by 100s of workers, with grubby children running in and out, enjoying the break from their daily City life. The process for picking was extremely simple. The long climbing vines of hops clustered like bunches of grapes, are trained up poles and over wires and all the picker had to do was to tear them down and strip the hops into a bin, keeping them as clean as possible from leaves. The downside was that the spiny stems cut the palms of one’s hands to pieces, making for painful work. To pick and crush one between your fingers is to release a very heady bitter aroma that is clearly the scent of beer.