Picture of the Week: #29

[taken during week running from 16/07 to 22/07]

Once again we're in Northumberland, and specifically at Wallington Hall. Northumberland, like much of England, has no shortage of stately homes, given the amount of ludicrously rich people who have lived there (and owned all the land). This does seem a mite unfair, or perhaps this is just my filthy pinko commie liberal hippie side speaking - when I'm going round the countryside, though, and I find a high stone wall several miles long, surrounding some of the most beautiful and fertile land in the entire county, it does strike me as, I don't know...perhaps slightly odd.

There are some good things about stately homes, though, and in this particular case the best thing was the gardens - the photo shows the way into them. They were an incredible demonstration of how sufficient money and manpower can change an entire landscape into something completely unrecognisable. Obviously this kind of power can be used for evil as well as for good, but fortunately whoever designed Wallington's gardens managed to turn away from the Dark Side and do a beautiful job. Now if only there was a way of getting that kind of result without stamping on the faces of the poor over several centuries...