Apart from planning the phased introduction of several new permanent exhibitions, including 'The Portmans at Hestercombe', 'The Legacy of the Warres' and 'Gertrude Jekyll, Edwin Lutyens and the Formal Garden', we hope to stage and plan four temporary exhibitions in Hestercombe House in 2025, each drawing upon the growing collections of the newly accredited Hestercombe House and Gardens Museum.
Hestercombe Smiles (‘The Lighter Side’)
Historical photos will be the focus of this exhibition, chronicling the sense of wellbeing that the Hestercombe estate still instils in its many visitors. From the late 19th century to 1951 it was the Portman family and their many friends, servants and estate workers who came to know the mental health benefits of a simple quiet life in the verdant Somerset countryside. The arrival of the Somerset Fire Brigade in 1954 ushered in an era of increased access, as both permanent and visiting staff discovered the healthful benefits of lunchtime walks and leisure pursuits in the peaceful grounds. From the 1970s until 2006, the Fire Brigade shared Hestercombe with the wider public as the Formal and Landscape Gardens were restored and the curtain was drawn back on what would become popularly known as ‘Paradise Restored’.
Local People & Hestercombe
Hestercombe has always had a special relationship with the local community. The nearby villages of West Monkton, Kingston St Mary and Broomfield have supplied many of the servants who catered to the occupants of Hestercombe House and the estate workers who cultivated the fields, maintained the gardens and woodland, repaired the outbuildings and grew the fruit and vegetables that sustained the Warre and Portman families. These are their stories, underpinned where possible by oral histories taken from local people, some direct descendants of Bill Bond (1879-1969) garden and estate carter, Pamela Brown (1922-2016) under housemaid, Sidney Furzer (1883-1956) general labourer, Thomas Aish (1865-1922) blacksmith, Robert Trump (1877-1968) gamekeeper and others.
Hestercombe at War
Hestercombe not only played an important role in preparing British forces (8th Corps Rear HQ) for combat in North Africa during WWII, it served as HQ for US European Theatre of Operations 1943-44, readying GIs for the D-Day assault on the beaches of Normandy, France, on 6 June 1944. Using period plans, photographs and documentary sources showing how the estate was literally transformed into ‘Hestercombe Camp’, the exhibition will also revisit revealing interviews conducted by Graham Burton in 2006 with British and American soldiers stationed here to inform his booklet, Hestercombe at War, An Illustrated History and Guide (2007). New findings, including aerial photographs, the wartime memories of local residents and startling revelations about 'Golding', the soon-to-be-excavated secret underground wireless 'IN-Station' constructed on the estate in 1942 as part of Winston Churchill's preparations for a possible German invasion, will further enrich the narrative.
‘The Fire Brigade that saved a Country House’, The Somerset Fire Brigade
The Somerset Fire Brigade (est. 1948) relocated from a cramped outdated command centre at 41 Upper High Street, Taunton to a new combined H.Q. and central training facility, Hestercombe, in early 1954. Six months of redecorating, all by Fire Brigade personnel, was followed by wide-ranging repairs to the building’s roof, chimneys, heating apparatus and outdated water filtration system. Over the coming decades, the entire building would be rewired and many of its heritage features restored, including the distinctive late 19th century ground floor plasterwork and wallpaper, Victorian Water Tower and 18th century dining and sitting rooms (the latter involving major structural repairs). This the story of how a fire brigade saved a country house, told with the aid of extensive archival material, artefacts from the former Somerset Fire Brigade Museum at Hestercombe (including antique fire engines!) and brought to life through the memories of retired Somerset Fire Brigade personnel and Fire Service enthusiasts.
