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| | | From Shetland to the Scilly Isles, Open Country travels the UK in search of the stories, the people and the wildlife that make our countryside such a vibrant place. Each week we visit a new area to hear how local people are growing the crops, protecting the environment, maintaining the traditions and cooking the food that makes their corner of rural Britain unique.
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|  | | Montacute House | |
Thousands of people visit Montacute House, a National Trust property near Yeovil. The magnificent Elizabethan mansion, built in honey-coloured stone, was featured in the film Sense and Sensibility and is one of the best preserved in Britain. It was built at the end of the 16th century for Sir Edward Phelips, a lawyer who became Speaker of the House of Commons and Master of the Rolls and in the trial of Guy Fawkes opened for the prosecution.
Montacute House
The house is H-shaped and symmetrical, with elegant chimneys, carved parapets, and is surrounded by a formal garden and a landscape park.
Helen explores the parts of the house that tourists never see and discovers the hidden life beneath the floorboards, in the roof space, behind the walls and within the very fabric of the house.
She begins by climbing a 15ft ladder with Dennis Dickinson and Anita Jewel-Harrison, National Trust volunteers, and Mark Rogers, the house steward. Here, amid the dust and cobwebs they discover the traces of bats and woodworm and peer down into the Long Gallery - the longest in Britain.
Helen makes her way down through the house and Mark shows her what’s scuttling under the floorboards, nibbling at the fabric of tapestries and carpets, nesting within the walls just inches from where visitors walk and how the house staff cope with everything from carpet beetles to birds’ nests, and why it’s important to monitor the dust: there's curiously tropical gathering of insects in the cellars.
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There’s a lot going on out in the garden: Matthew Buckler, South Somerset warden for the National Trust shows Helen how an apparently unremarkable external wall is filled with a wealth of plants and wildlife. The house is built of local limestone and provides a variety of habitats - from the sheltered wet places at the bottom to the desert conditions towards the top. In fact, many Mediterranean plants can be found here.
Helen moves further away from the house to meet Bryn Price, the head gardener. If Montacute were left to its own devices, it could easily end up like something out of The Sleeping Beauty, tangled in thorns and overgrown by creeper. Even in winter, there’s work to be done - at the moment Bryn is trying to combat mice which are eating the bulbs - and he’s got a novel remedy for keeping moles at bay.
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