周辺の天然記念物・トップ9

Check out the bee hive at the back! There plants in there are absolutely beautiful

This place has an awesome echo! Give it a Go

The Welcombe Hills and Clopton Park offer delightful walks through grassland and woodland. Woolly thistle, quaking-grass and the diminutive adder’s-tongue grow in the grasslands where ant hills created by yellow meadow ants are a distinctive feature. The woodland contains oak, horse-chestnut and beech with English elm. Birds are plentiful, with great spotted woodpecker, sparrowhawk, little owl, treecreeper and finches enjoying the woodland where ravens breed in spring. Brimstone butterflies are numerous in the spring sunshine. History of the Welcombe Hills: a Shakespearean tale The reserve may have got its name from a historic well found here with its inscription 'SJC 1686'. Margaret, daughter of William Clopton who died in 1592 supposedly drowned here. It was around this time that Shakespeare was writing his famous play, Hamlet, and its believed that this tragic event provided the inspiration for his 'Ophelia' and her lonely death.

National Trust property with expansive grounds and deer park.

Great day out good for a picnic

On 11th November 2014 a memorial was unveiled  in the Jephson Gardens, between the Aviary and Willes Road entrance.  The memorial will remember all those who played any part in World War One, including the widows and orphans and those who served at home. The Leamington History Group applied for the grant for the memorial and worked with Warwick District Council and Leamington Town Council to commission the sculpture. The memorial was designed by Tim Tolkien and the central feature consists of two poppies in flower and one stem with a seed-head at the top. All the poppies are entwined with barbed wire and this extends to wrap around some adjoining fencing. The tablet in front states simply “The Poppies; Lest We Forget”. The plaque naming the sculptor calls it “Barbed Poppies”. It is a subtle design which is not quite as immediate in effect as the sea of poppies surrounding the Tower of London in November 2014 but many people we have spoken to agreed that it evoked a strong emotional response.

Memorial with statue of Dr Henry Jephson on plinth within circular, domed temple. 1848-1849. Temple by DG Squirill, statue by Peter Hollins. Carrara marble statue on Sicilian marble pedestal in sandstone ashlar temple with lead roof and cast-iron grill. Rustic plinth. Flight of 8 steps to entrance with tooled architrave, pulvinated bay-leaf frieze, cornice surmounted by carved coat of arms. Otherwise, solid circular drum with peristyle of eight Corinthian columns, architrave, frieze; dentil cornice surmounted by frieze of C-scrolls. Within is a 7-foot high statue of Jephson in doctor's robes on cylindrical pedestal. Grill covers opening. INTERIOR: to centre a statue of Jephson in doctor's robes on cylindrical pedestal approximately 2 metres high. HISTORICAL NOTE: foundation stone laid by Lady Somerville, 13 May 1848. Temple completed and opened 29 May 1849. Formerly Newbold Gardens, established in 1836 as a covenanted open space, laid out and planted in 1846-1848, and renamed after Dr Henry Jephson, a local medical practitioner of considerable repute. The Gardens are included in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England (FP3265).

The cutting on the approach to the tunnel on the north side is a designated site of special scientific interest. Sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) are protected by law to conserve their wildlife or geology. The cutting exposes a sequence in Arden sandstone of the late Triassic period in which grey-green shales and siltstones with wavy and lenticular bedding pass into white fine-grained well sorted dolomitic sandstones. The facies (character of a rock expressed by its formation, composition, and fossil content), thus indicates marine (intertidal) deposition conditions.

The Lucy family owned the land since 1247. Charlecote Park was built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the Elizabethan house remains, nowadays it is in fact mostly Victorian. Successive generations of the Lucy family had modified Charlecote Park over the centuries, but in 1823, George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house and set about recreating the house in its original style. Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75 ha), backing on to the River Avon. William Shakespeare has been alleged to have poached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man and been brought before magistrates as a result. From 1605 to 1640 the house was organised by Sir Thomas Lucy. He had twelve children with Lady Alice Lucy who ran the house after he died. She was known for her piety and distributing alms to the poor each Christmas. Her eldest three sons inherited the house in turn and it then fell to her grandchild Sir Davenport Lucy. In the Tudor great hall, the 1680 painting Charlecote Park by Sir Godfrey Kneller, is said to be one of the earliest depictions of a black presence in the West Midlands (excluding Roman legionnaires). The painting, of Captain Thomas Lucy, shows a black boy in the background dressed in a blue livery coat and red stockings and wearing a gleaming, metal collar around his neck. The National Trust's Charlecote brochure describes the boy as a "black page boy". In 1735 a black child called Philip Lucy was baptised at Charlecote. The lands immediately adjoining the house were further landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1760. This resulted in Charlecote becoming a hostelry destination for notable tourists to Stratford from the late 17th to mid-18th century, including Washington Irving (1818), Sir Walter Scott (1828) and Nathaniel Hawthorn (c 1850). Charlecote was inherited in 1823 by George Hammond Lucy (d 1845), who married Mary Elizabeth Williams of Bodelwyddan Castle, from whose extensive diaries the current "behind the scenes of Victorian Charlecote" are based upon. GH Lucy's second son Henry inherited the estate from his elder brother in 1847. After the deaths of both Mary Elizabeth and Henry in 1890, the house was rented out by Henry's eldest daughter and heiress, Ada Christina (d 1943). She had married Sir Henry Ramsay-Fairfax, (d 1944), a line of the Fairfax Baronets, who on marriage assumed the name Fairfax-Lucy. From this point onwards, the family began selling off parts of the outlying estate to fund their extensive lifestyle, and post-World War II in 1946, Sir Montgomerie Fairfax-Lucy, who had inherited the residual estate from his mother Ada, presented Charlecote to the National Trust in-lieu of death duties. Sir Montgomerie was succeeded in 1965 by his brother, Sir Brian, whose wife, Lady Alice, researched the history of Charlecote, and assisted the National Trust with the restoration of the house.

The Jephson Memorial, a white marble statue of Dr Jephson erected in the Imperial period. It is situated in Jephson Gardens, south west of the clock tower. White marble statue of Dr Jephson, by Peter Hollins of Birmingham, which was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1848. Statue contained in a circular, stone, domed Pavilion with Corinthian order and eight attached columns.

The Glasshouse, in Jephson Gardens, opened in 2003. It was built on the site of a redundant nursery as part of the Heritage Lottery funded restoration of Jephson Gardens. The Glasshouse houses a range of beautiful tropical and temperate plants including banana, pink powder puff and bird of paradise. There is also a popular goldfish pond, observation beehive and a slate sculpture designed by David Wilson.