Overview

Great place to visit if you use a wheelchair. There's a garden centre with café & accessible loo. Farm shop & tea room, also accessible. House & chapel also ok for wheelchair. Extensive grounds & mini railway. Staff were brilliant.

Transport & Parking

We arrived by car & parked in a disabled parking bay at entrance to garden centre. If you arrange it in advance, it is possible to park right by the front door of the house. There is a buggy that has room for one manual wheelchair, it will take you from car park to house & stop at chapel if requested.

Access

There are 2 lifts that take manual wheelchairs in the house, one is a stair lift that took us from street level down into the basement (servants quarters), the other is in the main part of the house & travels between the basement & ground floor where the state rooms are. There are steps up from street level to the ground floor at the front on the building hence the need for the stair lift.

Toilets

The accessible loo in the garden centre was clean, large, had grab rails. The independent tea room had a similar disabled loo, I'd say both had room for a carer. There may have been loos at the house, but we did not use them.

Staff

Jess greeted us at the chapel & offered to take us up to the main house, an offer we gratefully accepted because it avoided pushing a manual wheelchair up a gravel path. She was kind & chatty, operated the stair lift to take us down into the basement & the lift inside which took us up to the ground floor. Lynda was working on the front desk, very helpful, explained our route & gave us a guide book. All the room guides were friendly, kind & enhanced our visit with their knowledge & practical assistance. Once we had finished our visit, Lynda helped us with the lift & Jess was waiting to operate the stair lift for us. We boarded the buggy with Jane who travelled with us to the chapel & acted as our guide, making sure we could access the chapel with the ramps & told us about the history of the building. Huge thanks go to these 3 ladies who went out of their way to help us & ensure we had a safe & enjoyable visit.

Anything else you wish to tell us?

It was a fairly quiet day so there was plenty of space. It felt safe from a Covid point of view. If anyone had wanted to wear a mask, I get the impression that would have been fine.