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In 1994 we visited this country house between Ashby and Derby. My recollections of it are that it was big, cold and cluttered and, that we found a gravestone in the churchyard with the name 'Bradbury' on it, and have wondered ever since if it is a long lost family member.

So to 2011. James tried to take us in the exit but apart from that, we found it easily. Thanks to borrowed National trust cards, we waived the massive 8pnd entrance fee, parked the car and began exploring. How differently we see things when we do not constantly have 25% or more of our brain focussed on our 5 year old child as we did the first time. It was not just a big house as we thought, but a great spread of stables, brewery, tunnels, walled garden and so on.

We started with the house which, they change the visitor route of so we got to see very different rooms to what we saw in 1994. Although the Trust have repaired the roof and major faults for safety, the house has been deliberately left as it was in the 1800's when the family couldn't afford the upkeep and it went into decline. There are rooms which were not used for decades and in one we were treated to a description of how experts took down the wallpaper, treated the rising damp and then remounted the ancient wallpaper on boards. You would never know that this faded,ageing paper was not in its original place.

The house is really huge and the hallways and small as well as big imposing rooms seem to go on forever. After exploring the house, we headed down into the wine cellar and stores before proceeding deep into the servants tunnel where they were expected to go so as not to be seen by visitors. As you can guess, I complained but as Glenn said 'At least they didn't have to walk out in the rain'.

At the end of the tunnel is the brewery where the NT lady told us they had to brew enough ale for the servants as well as the residents to drink 8 pints a day because the water was not safe for drinking. Worst excuse I've ever heard for alcohol consumption; haven't they heard of boiling?

Up the hill we went back to the church and, sure enough, there was the headstone to William 26 and his son 5. The lady inside said that from the position they are in it is safe to assume they were servants; oh well, back to work then.

Now to the walled garden which we didn't visit in 94'. It was really beautiful and even though it was a very cold, extremely high wind chill factor day, made for a very pleasant walk. I was amazed at the tenacity of the palms growing in this garden and tempted to offer them my gloves.

What has been cemented in my mind by this visit is thus; even if you were lucky enough to live in one of these houses when they were prosperous, you were probably worrying the whole time about the possibility that they would not be. If you were/are lucky enough to inherit one of these houses, you are not lucky at all because they cost hundreds of thousands of pounds a year for the upkeep (TV show about country houses) and no-one wants to buy them for that very reason. It is therefore a wonderful thing that governments and community groups provide funding for such places, or we would lose them forever....not sure how they decide how many we need to preserve though. It was a lovely couple of hours and an interesting comparison to our visit of 17 years ago.