The House
Five rooms open, 1583 to 1866, and a ceiling its makers signed.
Wed–Sun in seasonWe plant for people we will never meet.
A Grade I house and 2,400 acres in the Welbury valley, Oxfordshire. The oaks in the west park went in in 1782. The ones we planted last winter are for 2140.
The estate
Held in trust, worked as a farm, open most days.
Ashmere has been in one family since 1583 and in a charitable trust since 2011. The trust owns the house, the park and the endowment that keeps them; the farm pays its own way.
There is no theme, no trail and nothing costumed. The house is open five days a week in season, the gardens and the meadow are open every day of the year, and the best thing here costs nothing and is a field.
- Acres
- 2,400
- Veteran oaks
- 340
- Since
- 1583
- Plan runs to
- 2124
A garden you finish is a garden you have stopped thinking about.
What is here
Four things, and they are not equal.
The house is the reason most people come. The meadow is the reason we think the place matters.
The long plan
Costed to 2124.
Every commitment we make is priced out to the end of the next century — the roof, the yew walk, the oaks, the meadow. Anything we cannot fund that far ahead, we do not start.
It sounds grand and it is mostly just arithmetic. It also means nobody here is in a hurry, which visitors notice within about ten minutes.
Come on a Wednesday.
It is the quietest day the house is open, the gardeners are all out, and you will very likely have the Long Gallery to yourself.