May 05 - Worthing

May 05  - Worthing 


Taking advantage of our Australian National Trust membership we visited one of the local NT properties, Petworth House and Gardens.  Famous for its extensive art collection (including Turner, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Holbein), it also has an extensive deer park landscaped by Capability Brown.  Although not as opulent on the outside as many other country mansions it’s still pretty special inside though. Even so there are a couple of standouts, the ‘Carved Room’, and the ‘Grand Staircase’. The Carved Room has some wonderful carved wood panelling on the walls as well as a number of portraits, one of which is of King Henry VIII, it’s magnificent. The Grand Staircase, which has a series of allegorical murals on the ceilings and walls and, although not normally my cup of tea, is really quite impressive. 

After the house we walked through the parklands and gardens to try and see some deer, which we’d not manage to see in the New Forest recently. After walking for about thirty minutes though we were lucky and managed to get ‘fairly’ close to the herd, although not close enough for decent photos as they’re were all pretty wary of humans. 



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