“Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plowed hills
With loving blue”
– from Early Spring by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The arrival of spring feels reason enough to borrow a line from Tennyson – who, conveniently, was godfather to the 6th Baron Somers and therefore very much part of the family. And we can’t help feeling poetic after months of early fires, closed curtains and many – many – hours clocked up on the sofa in the Gothic Drawing Room. Spring at Eastnor lands like a well-crafted couplet – and winter is left at a full stop.
Morning
The change begins with the light. The sun trickling through the curtains in the drawing room feels different somehow. Brighter. You open a window a crack. Then another. And another. Outside, the blackbirds are belting out a brand-new rhapsody, undercut with the bass thrum of a Land Rover engine in the distance. And just like that, the estate comes back to life.
Most spring days begin with a morning walk marketed as “brief”, though it never is. The air is (finally) mild enough to encourage lingering. Around the lake, the banks are donning their brightest accessories: first, daffodils as vivid as Sketch’s dining room, then a small army of bluebells, all wearing the morning dew like pearls. A few snowdrops stick around out of sheer stubbornness.
After circumnavigating the lake, plonk yourself on the bench looking back towards the castle. The view is unapologetically theatrical; Eastnor has never been shy of an entrance, even if you are the only audience.
Afternoon
After a late breakfast – taken properly, not on the hoof – we head off again. Spring air has a habit of luring you outside: towards the deer park perhaps, or into the woods, which have been recently redecorated with a new carpet of wild garlic.
Occasionally, someone suggests leaving the estate altogether. Preposterous. Although a cloudy pint of Herefordshire cider in a black-and-white beamed pub in Ledbury can prove persuasive. As can the castle, and the castle usually wins. You know. Because it’s a castle.
And because spring at Eastnor also means the annual dusting-down of the collection, which prompts a reinspection of the paintings. The 3rd Earl’s painted coastlines in the Italian Bedroom – Palermo, Naples, places considerably sunnier than Herefordshire – are particularly alluring on damp afternoons. Whether that is his artistic genius or a collective desire to decamp to Italy the moment the sun hits is a question best left unanswered.
Evening
By the time afternoon tilts towards evening, the martini trolley has appeared upstairs, which is generally the sign that proceedings are entering their more civilised phase. The sunset over the lake is worth experiencing, but so is a bath and an Eastnor martini. One must prioritise, after all.
Dinner, when it comes, is dressed for. No one insists. The Great Hall’s 60ft ceiling simply has a way of encouraging heels, polished shoes and a slightly straighter back – as do the State Dining Room’s chandelier and clutch of family portraits. The menu is generally dictated by what’s produced that month; the conversation, whichever wine has been pulled out of the cellar (something white and Italian often feels right).
And so, the day that began with the idea of doing very little concludes having done rather well – which, at Eastnor, is generally the point.