Historic fruit trees were discovered in a National Trust garden in Ickworth House estate, Suffolk.
A notebook packed with unique garden history has been discovered in a filing cabinet in a gardener’s shed at the National Trust’s Ickworth estate in Suffolk. The notebook documents more than 200 varieties of local plum, gage, pear and apple trees, all planted at Ickworth from 1898 to 1930. Some of these varieties, which include Blickling, King of the Pippin, Lady Ludeley, Hoary Morning and Court of Wick, were previously unknown to Ickworth staff. – Country Life
Ickworth garden wall
Re-planting of Ickworth’s historic wall fruit (fruit trees trained against the garden walls) will start in autumn 2010 when research is complete. – History Times.com
Ickworth silver garden
Elizabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, with the artist's daughter Julie as subject
Elizabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun painted three original and authenticated self-portraits, one of which hangs in Ickworth.
Hoary Morning apple
Jane Austen's World 
Hi Vic — from another! My husband and I stayed at the NT hotel at Ickworth in 2003 after the JASNA AGM in Winchester. We loved the hotel, in one wing of the house, toured the rotunda, now the NT museum and saw with interest the plans they had to turn the other wing into a shop. We also walked around the gardens and the walled gardens, quite a distance from the house. They were cultivating a vineyard and it seems I recall seeing theyir wines are not available.
Whoops! I inadvertently hit send instead of backspace to correct my typos. I meant to say their wines are NOW available. Perhaps that’s from their website??
Most of the time I lurk on various lists covering Jane Austen, the regency, research and historical novels — and read some of the blogs. There’s always great into out there. Many thanks for yours!! cheers, Vicky
Amazing Vic! You’re a wealth of information.
Bargain with the Devil
Dear Vic,
I just can’t believe that you find all out all this information about Jane Austen and make it freely available to all on the Internet. It restores one’s faith in human nature!
I have just come across something which I thought I would share with you (though you may well know it already). Do you remember when, in one letter, Jane spoke of serving ‘black butter’ with wigeon and that she thought the butter was bad and decided not to serve it to guests again, but ate most of it herself? Poor Jane, I thought. However, in reading a book called ‘The Feast of Christmas’ I discovered that black butter was not butter at all, but what I would call a fruit cheese, made from equal quanitities of apples, blackcurrants or blackberries and less sugar (less sugar, but not sure how much less, I only saw the book in a London shop and am going to buy it for Christmas from Amazon where it is half the price) and then boiled until it sets – and of course, the colour would be black!
Cora: Thank you for sharing this wonderful tidbit with other readers. I will bring it to the front of my blog during Christmas. Vic