A visit to Dumfries House

The first day of July 2011 saw me make my way up to the Ayrshire town of Cumnock.
I'm accompanying a fellow rambler on a visit to Dumfries House.Link
And on Wikipedia

It's an imposing building and estate.Only recently opened to the public and only guided tours.
There's a comprehensive report on the rescue of the house and the Dumfries Family in the Telegraph here.
Telegraph... Dumfries-House-a-Sleeping-Beauty-brought-back-to-life-by-the-Prince-of-Wales.html

Here's a panorama of the front view.

Panorama of Dumfries House on CleVR.com

And here's a nice picture of my fellow rambler and the house.(don't they complement each other)

The elephants will eventually be taken away.If they'd been granite they'd have been ok,but they are in fact fibre glass mouldings.They were there as part of a fund raising campaign by the 'Elephant Family' charity.

This is round the back and a strange dragon on the guttering spotted by my fellow rambler.

No photography was allowed in the house.We were told that flash photography could ruin the many valuable tapestries and paintings.
Dumfries House also contains one of the greatest collections of Chippendale furniture ever assembled.
A Rosewood  Bookcase catalogued when made at £47.5s (the 's' is shillings pre-decimal) is valued at between £2 and £4 million.


The problem with guided tours is you don't get a chance to look around.We didn't see half the house and didn't get the chance to peruse the pictures in the halls and staircases.
Perhaps with time and effort it'll be a house you can walk round leisurely,but it was a rescue for the nation and at least it's not in the hands of a European Plutocrat. 

The literature tells us the following.
Dumfries House also has an excellent estate of over two thousand acres in which you can wander and come upon many other hidden delights, including the Adam Bridge, the Old Water-Powered Saw Mill, the Temple Gate House and the Walled Garden.


The problem is there's no directions to any of these.We did get to the Adam Bridge and we found a nice colourful garden but after a Google search I find that it wasn't the walled garden.


There are a lot of Redwood (sequoia) trees though.

You can see the girth in this picture (the tree that is)
There's a website with some great pictures of the Redwoods of Dumfries House.
Redwoodworld

We were looking for the Temple when we found the wee house, above right.It doesn't really look like a doo'cot (dovecote),but that is it apparently,built 1671.

This is the Robert Adam built bridge.

Here's a cute pastoral scene.

The last three collages were of a wonderful variety of flowers in the garden we walked through.

A very enjoyable visit but a need for more information.

Having said that,the grounds are free to walk in and the answer is to explore.

I'll be back.