Day One of the Orr Trip to England

Posted by Hanna Pettus

All the second year public hort kids and three undergraduates (Britton Garrett, Savannah Duke, and Jennifer Derrow) made the trip to the UK and arrived early Sunday morning in Manchester. The less-than-comfortable 8 hour flight left us jet lagged but more than excited to begin our international journey. After the long wait to get through customs (made better by free WiFi!), we hit the ground running.

Our first stop was Levens Hall in Kendal. The Elizabethan style house was built around a 13th century Pele Tower and Great Hall. An expansion was made to the house in the 16th century, adding oak panelling, intricate plasterwork, leather wall hangings, tapestries, early furniture, paintings, and other historic and fine objects. What amazed us is that there are still people living there today and can be seen occasionally wandering around with the general public. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed inside the house.

The most important part of our stop at Levens Hall was, of course, the gardens. They were designed in 1694 by Monsieur Guillaume Beaumont, the gardener for King James II that worked at Hampton Court Palace. Levens Hall gardens is the only garden he designed that still remains today. The topiary garden is magnificent and is the oldest in the world. The property also had a rose garden, an orchard, a nuttery, a fountain garden, an herb garden, vegetable borders, a beech hedge walk, herbaceous borders, and a bowling green. There was even a local croquet club meeting on the bowling green during our visit!

One view of the topiary garden.

A ha-ha. These are used to keep sheep out of the gardens without being aesthetically unpleasing, meaning you can't see it until you about walk off of it. One side gently slopes in until it reaches a vertical drop, which is usually a stone wall about 4-6ft. It's called a ha-ha because of it's "amusing" nature when someone would stumble upon the sudden drop.

After Levens Hall, we stopped in the town of Kendal for lunch before making our way to the hotel. We stayed in The Belsfield, in Bowness-on-Windermere. This was in the Lake District, north of Manchester, and absolutely beautiful. The main highlights included lakes, rolling hills, lush green foliage everywhere, and sheep galore. Not to mention the town: picturesque, as if out of a movie.

The streets of Bowness-on-Windermere.

View of Lake Windermere from our hotel's restaurant.

A shot from the car as we drove through the Lake District.

More posts from our England trip are coming soon!