Hyde Hall RHS Gardens, Essex

We made a recent visit to our local Royal Horticultural Society gardens and met up with our daughter for the day.

We have since been away for a week 'cat sitting' but more on that next time with beautiful photographs

More of a picture post than anything else

Lullingstone Castle Castle & the World Garden Pt. 3

The Church of St. Botolph

The church you see at Lullingstone Castle today - dedicated to the seventh century Saxon abbot St. Botolph - is of Norman origin and has Norman foundations clearly visible on  it's Southern side.

However it is believed that the church replaced an even earlier Saxon one. Earlier still is the site of the Roman Christian 'House Church' at Lullingstone Roman Villa, which dates from around 

380 AD. (written about in a previous post on Lullingstone Castle - see 'labels') 

Taken together, these three sites of worship suggest that Lullingstone may have he longest continuous history of Christian worship in Britain. 

These family churches always hold much history and of cause they wee burial places

Do check part 1 of this set of posts for more information

Lullingstone Castle & World Garden Pt.2

Now into the Poly tunnels for the less hardy plants from around the world. See previous post for details. 

The Cloud Garden is a temperate house and is home to some 500 beauties from around the world that are too tender to be out in the World Garden during the Winter

There is an Electric Shock plant in here

One of Tom's propagation benches 

Interesting to see the artistic designs depicting scenes from the natural habitats of these plants

Making our way back towards the World Garden

and will be taking some pictures of the family chapel which I will show in part 3

I am presenting this set of posts quickly as we are going on holiday - a lovely free break in return for cat sitting for a week and will be adding considerably to my photo portfolio and I am aware that I still have lots to post on blog yet.