Sweet Ingestre

Apple Day is traditionally around October 21st, but people seem relaxed about celebrating it when they like. 
At this Apple Day event, pride of place went to the Ingestre Pippin variety, which is named after the Ingestre estate in mid Staffordshire.  It tasted sweet...

Pre-loved stately home

Ingestre Hall is a lovely old Jacobean mansion, now taken over and used for education courses and such.

A spate of such lovely stately homes came on to the market following the Second World War; and, often, as in the case of Ingestre, the local county council would step in to buy the house - to save the property by re-using it. 
I don't think any council today, even citing good heritage reasons, would feel it could justify the expense of any similar conservation project.

Great artist - small church

This is as beautiful a piece of Victorian stained-glass as you'll find anywhere. The artist is Edward Burne-Jones, the great Pre-Raphaelite painter.  When the sun shines through it, I could look at it for hours.
I am continually stunned how much work of great beauty is hidden away in our country churches.

Ingestre Church - where you'll find this window - is however more famous for its architecture and its church furniture.     It's seventeenth cenury, and (supposedly) was designed by Christopher Wren.

The friends of the church do a great job in raising funds to maintain it - and to keep it open for the public to look round.

A bit of posh

Ingestre Festival Day is about as posh as one can get in the summer fayre world.
Set in the grounds of Ingestre Hall, there were the usual craft-stalls and tea & sandwiches stuff, but the highlights of the day marked it out as, erm, posh.

The highlights included bell-ringing displays in the eighteenth-century adjacent church, choir-singing on the steps of the great staircase, one stall (called 'The New Rectory') which featured the local vicar, and a mummers' play on the lawn.

But... it was all rather lovely, really.