It's time to catch up with some more of my excursions over the summer..... one trip I made was to Harewood House, a stately home situated just north of Leeds. They call it 'a St Petersburg palace on a Yorkshire hill' and it does have some of that kind of grandeur. Harewood is the home of the 7th Earl and Countess of Harewood. The present Earl, George Lascelles, (b.1923) is the Queen's cousin. The house was built in the mid-18th century by Edwin Lascelles, whose wealth came from sugar plantations and the slave trade, and it has been in the Lascelles family ever since. Such a significant house has inevitably had a very interesting history. The present Earl's mother was Princess Mary (1897-1965), great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and daughter of King George V, who married Lord Lascelles and lived here from 1930 until she died.
The house sits in a huge estate which is managed very effectively, marketed as an attractive destination for tourists and family days-out and as a venue for conferences, shows and receptions. It has beautiful gardens and a long-established Bird Garden (a collection of exotic and threatened species of bird).
No comments:
Post a Comment