On a lovely summer’s day in August a group of 18 Questers met at Stratfield Saye for a guided tour of Wellington’s House and Gardens. Stratfield Saye is only open to the public in August and a few days over the Easter period so it was in early January 2025 that I was logging onto their website each day until the tickets were released on the 8th January and we secured tickets for the first 2 tours on the 18th August. Only 10 people are allowed in the house at a time and there are only 6 or 7 tours per day, so we all arrived early as requested only to find that Stratfield Saye didn’t open their gates until just before 10:00 with the first tour starting at 10:15.
The people on the first tour quickly had a comfort break and their visit started on time. I was with the second group so we went to look at the outbuildings which lead up to the main house. The buildings were and are still a stable but have been repurposed to display a number of Wellington’s military artefacts and in the last stable was Wellington’s magnificent funeral carriage which was huge, 27 feet (8.2 m) long, 11 feet (3.4 m) wide and 17 feet (5.2 m) tall, the main body of which was cast in 12 tons of solid bronze. His funeral was the grandest of any state funeral in the 19th Century and was funded by a £100,000 grant from parliament. After this we went and visited the grave of Wellington’s favourite horse “Copenhagen”. This was the horse that had carried him for the whole of the 16 hours of the Battle of Waterloo.
It was then time for our visit to the house. The Stratfield Saye estate was purchased by a grateful nation and given to Arthur Wellesey, 1st Duke of Wellington for his victory over Napoleon. He was also given £600,000 to replace the current house with a more prestigious home that was supposed to rival Blenheim and called Waterloo Palace. The house was never built as plans were abandoned in 1821 as it proved to be expensive and the time it would take to build but the plans are displayed in the house and we could see that the scale of it was huge. On the area where “Waterloo Palace” was to be built a cavalry charge was filmed for the film “War Horse”.
The house tour was very interesting with the guides describing the rooms and putting into context a number of objects that are displayed. Although the house is large by normal standards it didn’t feel imposing and many of the rooms are in daily use by the family and you can see everyday articles on display or only covered with a cloth. Wellington had many grateful European Heads of State reward him after the defeat of Napoleon and the house is full of items presented to him, among them a number of beautiful dinner services in unique patterns and each consisting of 60 place settings.
After completing the tour everyone was looking forward to lunch and we drove to the pre-booked Wellington Farm Shop restaurant a few miles away where we all had an excellent lunch. I can certainly recommend them as they were very courteous, attentive and we didn’t have long to wait as all 17 lunches were served.
On completion of our lunches and the opportunity to browse in the shop our members made their ways home after an excellent day.
Kevin Barter
