One of our favourite tours this year has been to Snowshill Manor in the Cotswolds.  The house was originally built and owned by Winchcombe Abbey from 821 until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.   After many owners and tenants it was bought and restored by Charles Paget Wade in 1919 when he inherited money from his families sugar plantation in the Caribbean. 

Wade was an architect, artist and craftsman who devoted his life to amassing an enormous and various collection of craftsmanship, which he acquired mainly from antique shops and dealers. He bought and restored Snowshill purely to house this collection of artefacts.  He never lived in the house, he lived in the cottage next door.  He began collecting when he was very young, inspired by a cabinet full of trinkets with which he used to play in his grandmothers house.  His criteria for collecting was that all items must be ‘of interest as records of various vanished handicrafts’.   He himself was a skilled woodworker and put these skills to work restoring the house and the collections. 

It is hard to describe the vastness of this fascinating collection.  There are artefacts from all over the globe and they fill every corner of the house.  In each room there is a very well informed guide who will tell interesting stories about the pieces in the room.  For example, some of the Japanese armour was found by chance, in a plumbers shop in Cheltenham, when Wade went to buy some sanitary supplies.  They will also tell of Wade’s penchant for dressing up, apparently he would often rope in friends like Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene or J.B.Priestley into amateur dramatics in the garden and the house.  As you go round the house you get the impression of Wade as the classic English eccentric and think what fun he must have been. 

The garden was also restored by Wade into a series of little rooms to reflect different moods.  He thought the plan of the garden was more important than the flowers in it and added hard landscaping to give a permanent framework which makes the garden pleasant in both winter and summer. 

Although it is quite long walk from the entrance to the house there is a regular buggy service available.  There is also a good restaurant, which serves hot meals and snacks. Snowshill is well worth a visit or even two.  There is so much to see you couldn’t possibly see it all first time.