National trust series – Speke Hall

As National Trust members, we often go for days out to visit some of the beautiful houses and gardens that are being looked after by them. I thought I’d do a little blog series on the ones we visit. It’ll be just as and when we go.

I’ll start with our closest one which is just 30 minutes drive away, Speke Hall.  We came here in the summer holidays on a lovely warm day. The building itself is a Tudor timber framed house. It’s lovely but when you’ve seen inside once, there’s really not much to look at again. 

The thing I love the most about the national trust places are the grounds and the gardens.

They have a kitchen garden there and it just so happened that they were celebrating what would have been Beatrix Potters 150th birthday. They’d yarn bombed the kitchen garden with the most adorable little fruit, veg and creatures. I just had to share it with you.

And there’s Mr. McGregor himself, keeping a watchful eye over his veg patch. They had a lady dressed up in Victorian clothing telling children the much loved stories from Miss Potter and her little friends. Jude’s too much of a wriggler to sit still for more than 5 seconds unfortunately.

The grounds are quite extensive, I’m pretty sure we’ve never managed to see everything. They go all the way down to the River Mersey and if you’re a keen plane spotter, it’s right next door to Liverpool John Lennon airport. There’s a pretty woodland which I’ve written about before at bluebell time. They have a nice play area for the kids and also a maze, although I’ve not managed to venture in there just yet. The bonus is its just 30 minutes drive for us so we can go back anytime we feel like it.