Welcome to The Vyne.
The gardens and grounds are open at the moment which is brilliant,
but unfortunately we've had to limit our visitor numbers
and the house still isn't open.
But what we're going to do instead is take you on a sneaky-peek
behind-the-scenes tour of things you won't even get to see
even when you can come back to visit the house.
The Vyne was built in the 1520s by William Sandys,
Lord Chamberlain to Henry VIII
which basically meant that everyone who was anybody at the Tudor court visited here.
Henry visited with Catherine of Aragon and also with Ann Boleyn later on.
Elizabeth I visited here.
Unfortunately the Sandys family fortunes declined
and they ended up having to sell the house in the 1650s to the Chute family.
It was first owned by Challoner Chute who was Speaker of the House of Commons under Cromwell
and he left us the shape of the house as it is now.
So he knocked down vast swathes of a huge Tudor palace
that was probably about the same size as the base court at Hampton Court
and created a lovely E-shaped building
and more of a family home that we see now.
Eventually the direct family line died out
and the house came to the National Trust in 1956.
This is something that visitors are never going to be able to see
just because of the nature of what they are
but we can have a sneaky peek now.
So we're standing behind the portrait of Challoner
in the void in the wall these are some really beautiful wall paintings
that we think date from about 1640
When we believe that this was an outside wall of the house.
There's a male figure there, and a lovely house up at the top.
This is our beautiful piece of pietra dura,
a lovely casket and there's a really, really beautiful story behind this.
We don't know if it's true, but John Chute was on the Grand Tour
between 1739 and 1746 leaving his brother Antony here at The Vyne
probably a little bit jealous that John was having such a lovely time away on holiday.
And the the family story says
that Antony sent John a note just saying
"Please, you need to stop spending so much money."
Stop having such a good time when you're on holiday basically.
And John maybe didn't feel as guilty about this as he should
and sent back this beautiful thing by way of an apology gift to his brother.
It's probably one of the most expensive things he bought while on the Grand Tour
from the pietra dura workshops in Florence.
But it is absolutely beautiful
and Antony can't have been too disheartened about that
because he did keep it and it's still here.
So we're about to go into the attic spaces above The Vyne.
These are places that visitors really very rarely get to see
just on the occasional behind-the-scenes tour
so it's really exciting that we're able to show them off.
Just down here we've got one of our little bat entrances
to allow the bats to come in.
Just here you can just about make out our witch's mark or daisy wheel.
It's the best example that we've got in the roof here
but we have got others, a lot of them have been covered over
since the end of the roof repair project.
It was just what the carpenters put in to basically bless the house
and save it from evil spirits.
The idea was if you get stuck in a daisy wheel if you're an evil spirit,
you're just going round and round in a huge loop of daisy wheel petals and circles
and you're never going to get out
so the house will be safe from any evil spirits.
We had some really severe winter storms in 2014,
we had water pouring through the roof, through the windows.
We realised that we really had to do something to sort the roof out
hence the roof project.
so we spent a lot of time doing a lot of preparation work.
we packed up the whole of the upstairs of the building,
sent a lot of items off-site for safe storage,
and then all of the old tiles were taken off.
A lot of work to the timbers was done so the focus was always conservation rather than replacement.
So unless it was in really poor condition and really couldn't be saved,
we just consolidated and only replaced when necessary.
And it's been amazing ever since.
It's been a huge relief to know that The Vyne is going to be safe for another 100 years hopefully.
So thank you for joining us on our behind the scenes sneaky peek at The Vyne.
I hope you've enjoyed it
and thank you for your ongoing patience and support
while we continue to gradually get our places reopened.
We really couldn't do it without your patient support
and enthusiasm for coming back to see our wonderful places.