Earlier this week we made a brief visit to Polesden Lacey, a National Trust property not far from Guildford. This image was taken from the Terrace looking across to an expanse of woodland. What an unexpected treat for the eyes – such a broad palette of colours.
Polesden Lacey was home to Margaret Greville at the beginning of the 20th century, an Edwardian Socialite well-known for her extravagant weekend parties for the rich and powerful, both at this house, and also at her London home. Guests included the Duke and Duchess of York – later to become King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the parents of our current Queen) – and several Maharajas from India. The estate encompasses superb landscaped gardens (which we have yet to see) and 1400 acres with some of the finest views in the Surrey Hills.
LensScaper 
Wonderful 🙂
Indeed a treat for the eyes…
Cheers
Mr C
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Thanks Mr Cafe. The colours around here this Autumn have been magnificent.
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Beautiful image, Andy. I very much like the way that swathe of green comes in from the lower right. Adrian
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Thanks Adrian. I had to crop the bottom off the orginal because that diagonal line of grass ended in a diagonal dark hedge, which looked oppressive and just ruined the image. I was concerned though that it left trees without bases, but it was a necessary choice.
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Lovely image, Andy. And I’ve been there – my visit wasn’t as colorful as yours, because it was earlier in the season and the leaves weren’t changing and it was very misty. I have strong memories of the house rising out of the mist as we walked from the car park.
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Thanks Melinda – I wonder how many other places you visited down this way. We arrived late in the day, so didn’t have as much time as we would have liked in the house, nor the grounds – wrong time of year for flowers of course. But this was a wonderful vista. Many of the trees in the image had already lost their leaves, but it was the range of colours that attracted me. I can image that this place would have looked ethereal wreathed in mist.
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In the mist, it looked to me (as a Texan, of course) extremely British!
Our trip to England was a nostalgia tour with my dad, after my mom passed away. They’d visited many National Trust properties over the years, and so our trip was heavy with them. We saw Anglesely Abbey, Stowe Gardens, Chartwell, Wimpole Estate, Ightham Mote, Lodge Park, and maybe others that I can’t recall without a glance at my journals. I liked Stowe Gardens quite a bit – the scope of it was astonishing. And Wimpole Estate was another favorite, partly because that’s where I learned the excellent term “folly” but mostly because the parts of the estate that we got to see included the sort of behind-the-scenes things, like the servants’ stairs, that actually are more interesting to me than the fancy stuff.
We hope to come back to England in the summer of 2017…
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I remember you mentioning your previous visit – specifically Stowe that we visited many times as it was close to home when we lived in Northamptonshire. Chartwell we have visited twice since moving into SUssex.
If you make the trip next summer, do keep me informed, it would be so nice to have an opportunity to meet you and your family.
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Thanks, Andy – and I will be in touch as the trip comes together.
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I will look forward to hearing from you, Melinda
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Pleasant in its subtlety of colors. Where does it stand on the scale of autumnal colorfulness for that area?
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We have had some staggeringly rich colours this autumn, Steve. This is our first Autumn in Southern England and I don’t recall anything quite like it before. What attracted me to this scene was the variety: from denuded trees, to the strong big-canopied Oak in the left near foreground (yet to ‘turn’) and the yellow pointed trees in the woodland – an unknown tree whose shape is new to me but reminds me of the Aspens I so enjoy seeing in images from the States. So in terms of colour richness maybe not high on the scale, but the variety and pattern was what attracted my eye. Many thanks for your comment
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Such wonderful colours Andy. A very rich palette indeed. Beautiful! 🙂
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Thanks Adrian. Judging by the number of bare trees, it may well have been that the colurs would have been better still a week or two earlier, but I will never know. But I think this view is worth a re-visit next Autumn.
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I’ve never seen so much colour at Polesden!
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And it could have been better still a week or two earlier judging by the state of some of the trees. Thanks Sue.
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Drat! Missed it this year!
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Your description of the area makes it sound like one could spend all day photographing and still want to return for more. This is the type of lighting I find very nice for landscapes such as this.
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Thanks Ken. Certainly this place deserves, and will reward, a more leisurely visit – we will be back next year for sure. The lighting was quite flat as you can see but it certainly didn’t stop the colours putting on a good display.
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the best autumn colours I have seen in the UK ever. must be the dry summer, it is perfectly stunning and goes on and on.Marvellous photo you have taken.
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That’s a bold statement, Paula, but I am inclined to agree. The weather has most definitely played a part in this Autumns’s colours and this was a wonderful vista. We drove quite a distance that day along narrow lanes and it felt as if we were driving through a long orange tunnel at times – the hedgerows and overhanging trees all full of colour. The species of trees down here are slightly different from those we were used to in our old hunting grounds further North – and I think that the combination of Beech and Oak that we are now seeing so commonly around Susses does create a great mix.
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I didn’t notice your trees-without-bases when I looked at the photo. When you mentioned it, I looked again, and saw what you meant, but I didn’t find it distracting.
I don’t usually think of England as rich with autumn color, but this is lovely. It’s certainly more colorful than anything here to date, although a cold front just has passed through, and we may finally get some color-producing temperatures: provided the leaves don’t just drop, of course. I’m most intrigued by the orange-sherbet colored tree in the middle (or perhaps trees — there might be another). I’ve never seen quite that color in the fall. Is it common there? Do you know what kind of tree it is?
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We’ve certainly had a very rich set of colours this Autumn, thanks to the weather. No, I’m sorry I don’t know what that tree is – I suspect it is a cluster rather than just the one tree. We are expecting a storm to blow through tonight – a strong one by our standards – so I suspect a lot of the remaining leaves will be blown from the trees by morning.
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The landscape designer knew a thing or two … what a gorgeous tapestry of warming colours you captured Andy .
It will be interesting to see other parts of the house and estate when you visit again . Reading your earlier comment about the oaks … they really are putting on a show around the countryside here too , many standing aloof in fields but j u s t that little too far away for me to capture nicely without clambering fences 🙂
.
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Thanks Poppy. The oaks seem to be hanging onto their leaves longer than most, but we are going to bear the brunt of a storm tonight (as you may well have seen on TV) and I think it will a rather different world by tomorrow morning.
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Wonderful scene! (And so nice to see “colours” spelled correctly.) 🙂
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Thanks Frank. I like to try and preserve the English spellings despite the protestations of the spell checker in WordPress!
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They’re Canadian spellings, too. 🙂
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Well, that’s something I didn’t know.
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