(♪ The Bedfordshire May Carol, Dila Vardar ♪)
The county of Bedfordshire in the east midlands boasts a rich and ancient history.
Today, close to the town of Silsoe, lies a stunning estate, 90 acres boasting
everything from lush woodland walkways to ornate marble fountains and a picturesque pavilion.
And in the midst of it all, a grand mansion: the Grade I listed Wrest Park.
What I find so wonderful about Wrest Park is this sense of contrast and really it's the contrast
between the house and the landscape gardens. When you look at the house, this is in the style of
French chateau taken from France and put here in the middle of these fantastic landscape gardens.
The house dates from about the 1830s but the gardens themselves began to be landscaped in the
mid 1600s and then they were further developed by that most famous of landscape gardeners, Lancelot
'Capability' Brown in the mid 1700s. So for almost 400 years this landscape has been shaped,
it's been smoothed, it's been planted, it's been designed to fulfill the needs of status, fashion
and the styles of the various times and I think for me this is where that sense of a contrast
really becomes most apparent. When we stand at the far end of the gardens and we look back
towards the house and we see a house that's very much of its time and then when we stand
on the terrace looking out from the house into these fantastic vistas
we get this sense of the quintessential English landscape garden so there's this dynamic tension
which I think is remarkable and really helps to set the place off.
When we look at a stunning house such as this it's easy to think of it as a museum piece
and to forget that this was a home and on this site
lives were lived for centuries before the mansion itself was built.
This beautiful house was the home of one particular family for multiple generations.
Wrest Park was the home to the De Grey family for many, many centuries. In the later 17th century,
Amabel Countess of Kent who married into the family was known
as the Good Countess because of the work that she did to support the local poor. Just one example
is the fact that she bought the local pub when the existing owner was struggling and then leased it
back to them, keen perhaps to ensure that there were still facilities in the local community.
This philanthropy continued and we've got evidence of it going right into the 19th century. The
family were known for giving prizes and even giving clothing to pupils at the local school.
But in 1914, Wrest Park became a hospital caring for wounded and convalescent soldiers from the
First World War and it was a hospital that was paid for by the family. It lasted as a hospital
until 1916 when unfortunately a fire damaged the house and really began a decline in the
fortune of the house. But it ends a story that is really characterised by this idea of good works
and charity on the part of the family to the people who lived in the local area.
This grand estate calls for a local song with a grand history. Connecting with the tradition of
alms-giving from the master and mistresses of well-to-do houses to local springtime carolers,
the Bedforeshire May Song is a local variant of the timeless Mayday carol
which was once sung right across the UK. Here in the voice of singer Dila Vardar, these days we
associate singing carols with Christmas but in the past there were numerous times of the year
when villagers would go door to door asking for charity. May songs such as thing one were
accompanied by a ritual in which the singers known as mayers would leave ornate branches of
hawthorn at the doors of houses they visited as they exchanged songs for drinks, food donations
and even some silver coins. This song speaks of the natural cycles of death and regeneration,
so very in keeping with Wrest Park's history as the site of a military hospital.