Post by Dave on Jul 11, 2019 18:53:48 GMT
Bicton Park Botanical Gardens 11th July 2019
I decided today to visit for the very first time (and most likely the last time) the Bicton Park Botanical Gardens. Photography has always been my main hobby and this seemed the perfect place to get some great shots, but that really did not prove to be the case.
The dull grey sky sure played its part as I do like blue skies and white fluffy clouds, but the gardens simply did not live up to my expectations. I did enjoy today on the whole, but I am not sure the £11.95 entrance fee can really be justified. If you have a child over two years old you will be required to pay £9.95 for them as well.
What was lacking for me today was any wow factor; I have seen so many better gardens in a good number of the National Trust properties I have visited in the past. The only highlights today was the train ride (an extra £2 needs to be paid) and the original ruined church which is next to the new one that was built in 1850.
Once the new church was built the old one was partly demolished and the chancel reworked by Augustus Pugin as a mausoleum to the Rolle family. The mausoleum, which is not open to the public, contains Minton floor tiles, a vaulted ceiling, east and west decorated windows and a Rolle monument on the north wall. It also contains the baroque marble tomb of Denys Rolle (died 1638) and his wife and son.
The original gardens at Bicton were begun in around 1735; but most of the work was undertaken by John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle in the early 19th century. This included the digging of the lake in 1812 by French prisoners of war and planting the arboretum in 1830.
Much later the mansion house and surrounding lands were sold to Devon County Council to be used as an agricultural college, now Bicton College, which covers 490 acres and sleeps 231 residential students.
The gardens at Bicton were renovated by the baron at the time in the 1950s and opened to the public in 1963. The 22nd Baron gave the botanical gardens to a charitable trust in 1986, which sold them in 1998 to Simon and Valerie Lister who turned their 63 acres into the commercial visitor attraction which we see today.
The Palm House is an interesting structure that was built in the 1820s to a curvilinear design, using 18,000 small glass panes in thin iron glazing bars. The new church looks good from the outside, but is very bland inside and somehow lacks any real character.
The Bicton Countryside Museum was worth the time walking around with a number of old cars, motorbikes and old farm machinery etc, but that was it really. When I went on the train ride it went to a few places I had not walked too yet and after seeing them from the train, I felt the walk would not really be worth it.
The gift shop like so many was full of those very overpriced items that you pick up, look at the price and put back down again. Likewise the café is also very overpriced and one look at the menu made our minds up to find somewhere else to eat on the way home.
I always do my best to make the most of any day out and I sure did that today, I am not sure I could recommend the gardens to anyone I know. There are no family ticket offers, so a family of four ( 2+2) would have to fork out £43.80 to get in.
My days out walking and exploring on Monday and Tuesday were more fun and far more enjoyable and both days cost me nothing, it just goes to prove you do not need to spend money to have a good time and sometimes it is the case that the best things in life are so often free.
