#hestercombe

Baby Sniffles regards a mocha.

Hestercombe House - Somerset County - England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Hestercombe House is a historic country house in the parish of West Monkton in the Quantock Hills, near Taunton in Somerset, England. The house is a Grade II* listed building and the estate is Grade I listed on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

Originally built in the 16th century, the house was used as the headquarters of the British 8th Corps in the Second World War. Somerset County Council assumed ownership in 1951 and use the property as an administrative centre. Hestercombe House served as the Emergency Call Centre for the Somerset Area of Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service until March 2012.

Hestercombe House is surrounded by gardens which have been restored to Gertrude Jekyll's original plans (1904–07) and have made it "one of the best Jekyll-Lutyens gardens open to the public on a regular basis", visited by approximately 70,000 people per year. The site also includes a 0.08 hectare (8,600 sq ft) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Somerset, notified in 2000. The site is used as a roost site by lesser horseshoe bats.

The house was enlarged and altered in the 18th century, but this work is no longer visible beneath the refronting and enlargement works carried out around 1875 for Edward Portman, 1st Viscount Portman, who had acquired it in 1873

The house today appears an assemblage of several architectural styles popular during the Victorian era. While the overall design and air could be described as Italianate, also present in the same entrance facade are examples of high Victorian Gothic, such as an Italianate seigneurial tower confused in design with a campanile tower. This tower complete with a glazed loggia is crowned by a French-style mansard roof with oversized chimneys masquerading as Renaissance ornament. The centrepiece of the same facade is a porte-cochère designed in a heavy neoclassical style.

Seaspray is in a mocha.

Baby Sniffles is waiting for the coffee to be poured from the pot.