Thread: Shugborough Estate, Staffordshire

My first post, so please be gentle, comments welcome. Taken a few years ago, using 3.2mp phone camera, which looking back was tonnes better than the 5mp on my current phone

Shugborough is a country estate in Great Haywood, Staffordshire, England, 4 miles from Stafford on the edge of Cannock Chase. It comprises a country house, kitchen garden, and model farm. Owned by the National Trust and maintained by the leaseholder, Staffordshire County Council, it previously belonged to the Earls of Lichfield, the Anson family. I was lucky enough to have no-holds-barred access while running cabling for CCTV (I saw a lot of NT and other places like this and had total access in most cases, but never thought to take photos.dammit)

The mansion house:


The Gardeners cottage:


The blacksmiths:


And the internals, the Gardeners cottage:








Internal of the farmhouse, no wiring required here though so had to be quick:


Inside the mansion house, drawing room:

Main hallway:

Library:

I forget what room this was sorry:

Stairwell:

State bedroom (rumoured to be haunted):

State dressing room:

One of the main lounges:

And a shot of the gardens:


Now the really interesting stuff, the basement. Theres rumours that these basements run from Shugborough estate into the town centre although I had a good ferret around and couldnt find any secret doors, What I did find was a gold store right at the very end of the basements, which I wasnt allowed access to, so I'm not sure if there is gold in there or not. Theres a main hallway thats about 500m long with small rooms spurring off:









Hope you enjoyed

Congratulations and welcome. If that's your first post, I'm looking forward to I hope the many others.

Thanks, I did panic a bit incase the picture sizes were wrong or I'd not got the layout quite up to standard, it took me ages to write this post as I'd copied all the llinks from flickr wrong so had to go back and amend them all

Better than me, I haven't managed to work it out yet!

Its incredibly creepy, the whole estate has a strange atmosphere, and being left alone in those cellars....eek...

The mansion house, museum, farm house, and gardens (including the blacksmiths) are public access (some areas cost). You wont get into the basements or gardeners cottage without permission from the estates manager, and I doubt it will be easy to get, I was just lucky to be in the trade that I was in, and working for an employer that had ample NT and staffs county council clients. I just wish I'd thought about taking pictures at the time, I was left pretty much alone in places like Powys castle, Moseley old hall, Attingham, plus many other NTs, not to mention the choice of county council buildings, the Judges house, registry office, william salt library, County records office, to name a few. Theres some pretty fascinating areas in the guts of Staffords council buildings, however I'm struggling to get permission to revisit now I'm just Joe Public...

I dont know what one of those is, these were taken on the company PDA which was an orange SPV M3100 with a 3.2mp camera. The 5mp jobby on my current phone is terrible in comparison and its got auto focus and all that jazz but the tiniest bit of movement after auto focus sends the whole shot blurry except the bit that its auto focussed on.