Mottisfont Abbey

Mottisfont Abbey is a hauntingly beautiful property that encompasses medieval monastic ruins, one of England's finest 20th-century decorative interiors, a celebrated rose collection and superb grounds beside the crystal-clear chalk-stream waters of the River Test in the heart of Hampshire. Few National Trust properties offer such a layered richness of experience.

The story of Mottisfont begins in 1201 when the Augustinian Priory of the Holy Trinity was founded in a meadow beside the Test. The priory flourished for three centuries until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, when it passed into private ownership and was converted into a country house. The nave of the priory church formed the central block of the new house, and substantial portions of the medieval structure — including the cellarium, the chapter house foundations and fragments of the cloister — survive within and beneath the present building.

The most celebrated interior at Mottisfont is the trompe l'oeil Whistler Room, created between 1938 and 1939 by the brilliant young artist Rex Whistler for the owner Maud Russell. Working in egg tempera on the plaster walls, Whistler covered the former cellar of the priory with extraordinary illusionistic murals depicting an elaborate gothic architectural fantasy — columns, niches, urns, swags of flowers and playful trompe l'oeil details of such virtuosity that the room appears to extend far beyond its actual walls. It is one of the finest decorative interiors created in Britain in the 20th century, and Whistler's last major work before his death in Normandy in 1944.

But Mottisfont is perhaps most celebrated among garden lovers for its walled garden, which holds the National Collection of pre-1900 old-fashioned roses. In June, when the collection is at peak flowering, the walled garden is transformed into one of the most overwhelmingly beautiful and fragrant spaces in England. Hundreds of varieties of old roses — Gallicas, Damasks, Albas, Centifolias, Mosses and Bourbons — create a spectacle and a scent that visitors remember for the rest of their lives.

The broader grounds of Mottisfont are equally distinguished: ancient plane trees of enormous girth shade the lawn before the house, and the crystal-clear chalk stream of the River Test flows through the estate, its banks managed as water meadow and woodland garden.