A little red house
We recently visited London and used Abbey Wood site as our base. After spending several days doing all the usual 'touristy' things such as the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and the Shard during one of the hottest autumn weeks for years we found ourselves in need of a gentler trip. A short walk down the hill from the site, brings you to the station entrance, and just outside are the bus stops. From here we caught a bus (B11)towards Bexley Heath to visit Red House, now national trust and former home of William and Janey Morris.
The textile designer and social activist lived here from 1859 to 1865 together with Phillip Webb the architect, before moving to Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire away from city pollution
Several walls were decorated with Morris designs, as were the ceilings. Most of the fireplaces were decorative red brick, and there were several quirky bits of furniture. The house is built in an L shape and is also red brick with windows of different shapes. The front door has four mosaic glass panels depicting the seasons. There are Morris designs everywhere and wall paintings done by Morris' friends.
At 155 years old the house is showing signs of age and the trust are monitoring cracks to enable dealing with restoration. It's possible to book a guided tour in the mornings, and, when we were there in the afternoon there were two talks called 'behind the wallpaper' . The garden wraps round the house, has lots of hidden corners, and a feel of a family garden. There's a small cafe and shop too.
Catching the bus was a good idea as Red House has no parking facilities. If you get off two stops after Bexley station it's only a short, signposted walk. 10 minutes at most, about the same time as it takes to walk from the site to the bus at the other end. The B11 bus is fairly frequent too
Comments
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Thanks Steve it's always interesting to hear about different places to visit in the London area. We're due a visit over that way to see a friend and it sounds like another good alternative to central London. I've found a link to the Red House site but it wouldn't work on stories, another quirk of this area of CT I think?!
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Brue
Was that the link you wanted to add? Perhaps its just Mods that can add links. The Story Section is a bit quirky as we know!!!
Steve good to see info for visits by public transport.
David
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Thanks David, yes it was the link but when I tried to do it the link page was highlighted but blank, so I couldn't use it. Looks like it's this part of the story section, rather like "smilies" which I have to add in on edit.
As an experiment I'm going to try a link on edit.....
red house yes it works!
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