I spend half my life in coffee shops. I wish I hadn’t come in here now because it’s like an Egyptian bazaar with jaunty Middle Eastern music and we’re all locked in a stone pose unable to move, listening to a little old lady ranting and raving in a thunderous language outside on the street. Her voice is blasting through the double-glazing as if it wasn’t even there. I can’t believe that anyone can actually understand her, not when it’s coming out of her mouth at that supersonic speed. Whoever she’s talking to is getting an earful of abuse – probably her poor old husband. It’s very difficult to sit here and ponder your coffee when you’ve got that mad racket going on.
An old man is looking out of the window as well and we have a silent friendship going – we communicate with the occasional raised eyebrow and nod of the head. We don’t say anything to each other but we know that we share kindred boredom together. When something happens outside, like this crazy woman shouting, we both look at each other and roll our eyes. We don’t hold each other’s gaze for too long though, and get back to concentrating on our coffee as soon as eye contact is made. I don’t want to get talking to him because I know he’ll turn out to be one of those lonely old codgers who doesn’t ever let a conversation end in case he never gets to have one again. So I don’t flatter our conversation with words. Obviously he hasn’t got a clue that I’m writing about him.
Syon House a bit of a bugger to get to. You have to catch the train to Syon Lane and then go on a 20-30 minute trek down the road and cut through the park (not a simple thing to do when you’ve never been here before). And because I always turn up at places far too early the house is still shut. Luckily they have a little cafe and a garden centre to sit in, so that’s where I am right now: reading their little information leaflet to wile away some time.
I must admit that I’ve never heard of the Duke of Northumberland. Not in a historical sense. I’ve heard of the Percys, and the guy who designed the garden – Capability Brown (how can you forget a name like that?) – but my first impression of Syon House is that it looks like somewhere you might your grandmother on a Sunday afternoon. Nothing too strenuous… just somewhere nice and local where she could sit down and have a cup of tea with her grandkids and tell the same old stories ten thousand times. Somewhere like Box Hill or Epsom Downs. And this seems to be another one of those places: the cafe is full of animated oldies buttering up their crumbly scones with a smidgen of strawberry jam. It’s a totally different atmosphere to that Middle Eastern coffee shop earlier. No one is shouting, for a start, and there’s no flute music blasting our eardrums. It’s just tables full of scones and saucers and silver pots of tea and the clink clink clink of cutlery coming from the kitchens.
There are two things to see at Syon: the house and the gardens. I decided to have a look around the gardens first, which begins with a very impressive-looking conservatory which reminds me a little bit of the Palm House at Kew, but on a much smaller scale. It’s certainly very fine inside, but there are hardly any plants. Maybe they all wilted and died when they heard I was coming.
The gardens are nothing special. If you’ve ever seen the Syon House episode of Time Team then you’ll be disappointed to discover that they don’t actually allow you into that part of the grounds (the Capability Brown bit) – just the wild stuff round the side. You can walk along the lake with wild grasses growing on the bank, and see a lot of trees and sawn-up trunks, but there are no real flowerbeds. There’s not a lot of colour (unless you like green).
If you make it all the way round to the ‘Lookout’ on the far side of the lake then you have my commiserations. What kind of a lookout is that? If I’m going to expend my energy walking somewhere then I want to see something good at the end of it. I’m not walking to the end of a rainbow unless there is a guarantee of gold. And the only reason I walked round there was because I thought I was going to be treated to a view of the house… but all you get is a scruffy meadow full of weeds and distant trees.
So I’ll be honest and say that the day got off to a bit of a shaky start with the gardens, but the house won me over as soon as I stepped through the door. It doesn’t look particularly impressive from the outside because it’s very squat, like someone has sliced the top off – but the interior decorations are very grand indeed.
There are lots of portraits of the Percys and the Dukes of Northumberland hanging on the walls, and plenty of kings and queens as well. One particular corridor is like a Who’s Who of English history: they’ve got a wall that goes from Edward III all the way through the Wars of the Roses and up to Elizabeth I. Portraits of Charles I and Charles II grace the larger rooms, and there are even pieces by Van Dyck and Gainsborough. You certainly won’t be disappointed by the artwork.
The long library was my favourite room because it’s full of old leathery books. I’m pretty sure that they’re all real but of course you’re too afraid to touch them in case they crumble to dust in your fingers. The little antique tables were decorated with family snaps of the current occupants – a nice touch. I still don’t recognise him, but if you want to see the Duke of Northumberland posing with his missus at their daughter’s wedding then this is the place to do it.
Upstairs they have a few Edwardian-style bedrooms which they lease out to the movies (they’ve done a bit of Downton Abbey here). Apparently Queen Victoria stayed in one when she was just a princess.
Don’t miss the little exhibition which is squirrelled away behind a little stone staircase downstairs. It’s just a tiny one-room affair, but there’s a very friendly and chatty guide inside who proceeded to tell me all about the time Tony Robinson came here with Time Team. The guy was obviously very proud of his memories and relived the whole week with me.
You might like to spend the rest of the day at Kew Gardens, which is very close by