Just the other side of Wimborne, about a 40-minute drive from Millbrook B&B here in Swanage is the beautiful National Trust property and gardens of Kingston Lacy.
This house has links to our local area as the family who built this in the 1660s, the Bankes family, owned Corfe Castle which had been destroyed during the English Civil War.
Kingston Lacy is part of a 16,000 acre estate the was gifted to the National Trust in 1981 by Ralph Bankes. There are various different gardens, from a 7 acre Japanese Garden to a Fern Garden, lots of woodland walks and trails and depending on the time of year, various other themed events. It also has a really nice Cafe, and we can vouch for their pasties, they were really nice.
Just a mile or so down the road from Kinston Lacy is Badbury Rings, this has been a hill fort for various different eras, with evidence of Roman, Bronze and Iron ages. The inner rings are thought to date from around 500BC!
To get there you drive down an amazing avenue of beech trees.
There are many more beautiful images of this road than mine below, but you can see who the trees stretch out into the distance along the main road.
In fact, one of our local photographers (who won the Landscape Photographer of the Year award with this photo), Andy Farrer, has several prints available on his website.
Beech Tree Avenue – B3082 Wimborne to Blandford Road
