Blenheim Palace

It is only in retrospect that I realize we missed much of what our visit to Blenheim Palace had to offer. Blenheim was built in 1724, and is the only non-royal, non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Blenheim Palace boasts a collection of award-winning gardens, a butterfly house, a giant hedge maze, 2,000 acres of beautiful countryside, and is the birthplace of Winston Churchill. All this, however, I only learned after having left Blenheim. It could have been the fact that we only had a limited time to explore, or that I simply did not pay close enough attention to the map, but there seemed to be little guidance for such an enormous estate.

Our attention was immediately caught by the miniature train taking guests to the Pleasure Gardens. The train, which stopped at the aptly named “Palace Station,” was an attractive and fitting addition to the Palace grounds. It traveled between the main entrance to the Palace through a small portion of the countryside, and dropped visitors off at what was known as the Pleasure Gardens. The train was a perhaps superfluous show of wealth, yet so too is entire estate, and it was on the whole charming.

If we had looked at the Blenheim Palace website (or indeed taken more careful heed of our maps) we would have known that the Pleasure Gardens was a place for “family fun” (quoted from www.blenheimpalace.com). Imagine our surprise when, having arrived at the “gardens,” we found a small patch of (albeit beautiful) hedges and a trellis. “I thought their gardens were supposed to be famous,” I remember saying to my companion, “Where are all the flowers?” Though the garden’s name was slightly misleading, the garden itself was still a visual feast. The butterfly house had an anteroom, which held large, transparent boxes filled with dozens of both cocooned and hatchling butterflies, leading to the main house. It was warm and humid to simulate the butterflies’ home environment—a pleasant surprise considering the relatively bleak English weather outside the house. The house was relatively small, but the plant life inside was well-maintained and had a variety of color. At first glance the house seemed void of its titular inhabitants, but with a sharp eye one could spot large, colorful, and exotic butterflies perched discreetly around the exhibit.

The main area of the Pleasure Gardens delivered on its stated purpose: to entertain a family. There were model houses recreating an 18th-century Woodstock (the town Blenheim calls home), a sun dial where your own shadow tells you the time, an oversized chess set, a playground, and an enormous hedge maze. The hedge maze was something to behold: hundreds and hundreds of yards of perfectly-manicured shrubs twisted in on themselves, playfully inviting the visitor to dead ends and false escape routes, but never being so sinister as to actually get him lost. An elevated structure in the middle of the maze afforded a stunning view of the pleasure gardens (see Heidi’s post for the panorama), and, I couldn’t help thinking, the perfect vantage point for parents to find their wandering children.


Though the Pleasure Gardens were great fun, it was a shame there wasn’t enough time to see the award-winning Italian- or Rose Gardens Blenheim is known for. This, however, ended up being not as much of a travesty as one might imagine, for the best part of our visit to Blenheim was to come at the end, and quite by accident. On our way out we decided to take one last look at the grounds, and in doing so discovered the Queen’s Pond. Though called a pond, it appeared more like a lake, and stretched far in both directions. Trees with lush green leaves lined the edges of the pond, and in the middle a small island looked like a scene from Narnia or Wonderland with its purple-leaved trees shooting into the air. Though it was obvious that the grounds were manicured, there was a natural, other-worldly beauty to them. This, it turns out, is a good way to summarize Blenheim Palace as a whole: though the estate has been designed down to the last rose petal, its beauty is both undeniable and enchanting.