Croome

A third post in a short space of time!  Although we drove up to Yorkshire in one go last Friday David and I decided to break our journey on the way home and stayed overnight on Sunday at Evesham.  The Premier Inn we stayed at was just outside the town off a main road and on the site there was also a small retail park.  This park had a garden centre which was handy for breakfast the next morning but interestingly there is a Crafter's Companion shop as well as another sewing and knitting shop a few doors along which was worth investigating.  Having already had retail therapy opportunities at Yarnhdale I didn't buy anything at these shops and the Crafters shop mainly specialises in paper crafts.

The main purpose of this stopover was to visit Croome, an NT site between Evesham and Worcester.  We stopped briefly last year for a tea break on another trip Up North and said we'd visit again.  Apart from Croome Court the main house with its history, there were also quite large grounds for walking and the weather stayed dry long enough to enough the autumnal weather.  Also there is an RAF museum there as the house was briefly occupied by the RAF during World War 2 and developed radar systems.

The day was cloudy so my photos are dark.  Above are Croome Court and the church.  We walked to the lake where David spotted a heron on the little island in the middle.

Above is looking across to a grotto

There were some interesting sculptures too, I liked the textured patterns

Inside the house, which unusually wasn't furnished, we got to see a couple of exhibitions, one was of woven tapestries designed by the artist Grayson Perry.  Messages about society today and a lot to read into his interpretation.  The one below is Them (in London) and Us (rest of the UK).

This second large tapestry is called Battle of Britain about inequality.

These two were amongst a few works he had in this exhibition.  When we visited it was the last day so this is no longer available to see.

We were also able to see an exhibition by local branch of the Embroiderer's Guild, which is at Croome until the end of December about Croome's landscape  which is well worth seeing.  Here's a selection of my photos below.

In one of the bedrooms, the only one with a bed in it, there were more textile items with some blue fabric draped from the bed to represent the river that runs through the grounds.

So it was a brilliant day out and the weather stayed dry until just before we set off for home