The grounds, clearly, were beautiful as well. As was the palace:
GORGEOUS. Simply gorgeous. We had all afternoon, and we really wanted to see the palace itself. So we went on a tour of the State Rooms. Alas, they don't allow photos, but here's an online image to give you some idea of what we saw:
Yeah. BEAUTIFUL. The State Rooms were the rooms originally assigned to guests at Blenheim. I think, if I remember correctly, that this one would have been given to whatever royal wanted to come visit. Blenheim is very much indebted to the Stuart line - Queen Anne gave John Churchill, one of England's greatest ever military commanders, the land and money to build Blenheim after he kicked French arse in the mid-1700s. The Churchills (and after them the Spencers - now the Spencer-Churchills) are the hereditary Dukes of Marlborough, so Blenheim is their family seat. Portraits of Queen Anne - very flattering, skipping over the fact that by her death she weighed 20 stone - are ALL OVER BLENHEIM.
*Helen and Daddy - the portrait over the fireplace is of Consuelo Vanderbilt, who you might remember from when we toured the Vanderbilt summer house at Newport. She's the one who got locked in her room by her mother until she agreed to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough, who then used a huge portion of her huge dowry to make improvements to Blenheim. There are portraits of her everywhere, too. It's fantastic.*
But. We get outside after the marvelous tour. AND IT'S RAINING. And it's not one of those quick sudden fierce rains either. Oh, no. It's a dithering rain. It can't make up its mind whether to be slight and gentle, or whether to hail down in a deluge. And it takes all day to decide. (The one thing it knows is that it wants to be cold.)
So Caroline and I are in a quandary. Do we brave the incredible and famous grounds in the rain? Or do we do another of the tours and wait for it to calm down?
At this point, remember, we don't know that the rain's got the same indecisive mentality as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We are full of hope. (I am also wearing a sundress, which I changed into because the day was SO NICE when we started.) So we went on the tour of the family's private apartments, which was pretty awesome. The family's always lived in the East Wing, going back to John Churchill. The rooms have changed purpose somewhat, although they're still decorated as they were back then - for instance, John Churchill's bedroom is now the current Duchess's sitting room. Also, the Duke's younger son has his rooms in what used to be the servants' quarters. They're spacious and well-furnished, but it just amuses me. (Speaking of the servants' quarters - we also saw the system of bells for each room! Crazy. About forty bells lined up along the top of a wall, each with a plaque underneath saying which room it connected to. You'd station a footman down there, and when a bell rang, he'd head off to whatever room needed him.) We went on one of the last private apartments tours of the summer - the Duke was coming back to Blenheim that day, and they still needed to finish getting the rooms ready for him.
Needless to say, it was still raining when we got out. So we did one more tour - the "behind-the-scenes" tour with a few scandalous stories (my favorite is the one about John Churchill getting caught in flagrante with Charles II's mistress, Barbara Villiers, by Charles himself). When that tour was done, we said hell with it and went out to the grounds in the rain. We did have fun:
We made it to the Rose Garden, which was gorgeous even in the rain. And we walked around a bit. The grounds are huge, and I'm glad we saw the bits that we did. Then we realized we were starving, and went for dinner at a pub.
Also: Blenheim is literally in the same spot as Woodstock Palace, site of Elizabeth I's "close confinement" and Henry II's dalliances with Rosamund Clifford! The palace itself was destroyed during the English Civil War (one more reason for me not to be a Cromwellian!), but it was still awesome.
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