Report of Outing to Manderston on May 4th 2010

Craster Women’s Institute has not been stuck at home recently. Many of us enjoyed a very entertaining trip to see the Calendar Girls at the Theatre Royal, thanks to Travelsure. This month we have had our annual educational visit. We arranged to go to Manderston, the family home of Lord Palmer.
The house is just over the Scottish border, near Duns, in a beautiful setting surrounded by park and woodlands, with gardens and a lake overlooked from the terraces around the house.
The Palmer family has lived in Manderston almost continuously since 1855. The house, as quoted in the guidebook, has been described as the “swansong of the great classical house”, having been completed in 1905. In spite of the family name, Manderston was not built on money from biscuits. The original house was built in the 1790’s. It was bought in 1855 by the Miller family.  In 1901, the present Lord Palmer’s maternal great grandfather Sir James Miller commissioned Scottish architect John Kinross to remodel the house. He did so, creating a home of glittering style suitable for one of Sir James’s wealth and status as a country gentleman.
Manderston is certainly splendid. The state rooms are magnificent. The Silver Staircase, for which the house is famous and which is now cleaned three times a year by a team of volunteers, is amazing. However, the house retains the feeling of being lived in and loved by the family.
Unfortunately we did not have enough time to do justice to both the gardens and the house. So garden-lovers went in one direction and house-lovers in the other. We met up at the end for a very welcome cup of tea in the Stable block. The bluebells in the wood opposite the house were really spectacular.  Those who had gone round the gardens and woodland were as impressed as we were by the house.
Many of us plan a return visit to enjoy again the beauties of Manderston and to see what we missed this time.
On our way home we had dinner at the Pack Horse Inn at Ellingham. Here we were given a delicious meal and a warm welcome by David Duns and Jill Brown. This brought our day out to a very happy conclusion.
Jill kindly judged our competition, which was won by Vivienne Lowerson. Second was Trish Flegg, third, Sheila Dixon.
We are now looking forward to a family picnic/barbeque at half term and a trip to Melrose later in the year.

Manderston Web Site

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