Parham

On our way to Bognor we paid a visit to Parham House, an originally Elizabethan House which has escaped the clutches of the English Heritage/ National Trust oligopoly. Just to the north of the south downs and complete with its own church.

The building, the squat water tower at the centre of the snap left was renamed the potato tower at some point, perhaps having been allocated the homely function of potato storage.

You can get a good idea of the layout of the place at gmaps 50.9183277,-0.4934163. The image there is of a surprisingly good quality, so perhaps the aerial photographer is instructed to zoom in, or to fly low over places of public or national interest.

House, then moving right on the snap, taken from the car park to the east of the house, a couple of large courtyards, one once the stable yard (complete with Polesden Lacey style tower), then vegetable, flower and pleasure gardens. A detached dovecot. The whole surrounded by park, complete with deer. Once, one supposes, the owners of thousands of acres around.

Owned by a successful civil engineer between the two world wars, successful enough to be able to afford to tour some of the many closing down sales of similar houses at that time and stuff his own house with the treasures so acquired. So contents better than the usual run, including a lot of portraits by Sir Peter Lely. His wife was keen on fabrics, needlework and embroidery so there is quite a lot of that too.

The house including a very long long gallery, perhaps the longest in the land, decorated rather nicely by an interior decorator fashionable at the time of the engineer.

Group search key: phs.