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Friday 30 March – part four: I can fit you in

We headed into the servants’ quarters, and this is only a small selection of the bells that they had. As I said to Mark, you had to be highly trained to work out which bell was going, rather than standing there, staring at them, trying to work it out.



On the other side, at about a similar height were a set of pegs and a volunteer explained to us that these would have had fire buckets on, as the servants were expected to put any fires out. They would have had poles to lift the fire buckets down. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, I would not like to have been a servant in years gone by.

We then made our way over to the shop, getting the obligatory fridge magnet, along with a coffee table book about the National Trust properties and a seat that also acts as a walking stick – perfect for me at the moment with my problems with my ankle and needed to sit with the chronic fatigue.

That done, we asked a member of staff to call the mobility buggy and went to wait for it. It was there in a couple of minutes and we had a very pleasant ride back with the same guy who’d brought us down. He was so lovely. When we got back to the visitor reception, there was a queue of people waiting to go down, so I was very glad we’d arrived early. The car park was also packed, so while people may not be visiting the house, they were at least visiting the property, which was good, especially given the not so great weather.

We set off and were due to be making our way to Stourhead. As we drove along, the rain came down more steadily and it became apparent the forecast was right, as it seemed as if this had set in for the day. Now, we were carefully avoiding the M3 motorway, as Google told us there was a problem there and the A303, which is partially dual carriageway and partially single carriageway, as that also had problems on. As we’d later learn at the hotel, that was a good plan, as both had hefty delays.

As we drove along, we kept seeing signs for Bombay Sapphire, so I looked it up and it was a visitor attraction with the opportunity to take a tour of where they make the drink. It turned out it would literally be right alongside the road we were travelling along, so we decided that we’d stop there.

It’s certainly a beautiful place with a lot of history to it. It’s called Laverstoke Mill and it’s been home to a mill on the site since at least 903 AD, but the first official records show it as a corn mill marked in the Doomsday Book of 1086. It was converted into a paper mill in 1719. By the mid 19th century, it was being used to produce money – Indian rupees, but within a couple of years, there was a robbery at the site, which led to a police officer being stationed there all the time. At the height of its work, the mill was making bank notes for over 100 countries and employed 500 people. Paper making ceased in 1963, after more than 200 years of such work at the site. It then became vacant and was eventually acquired for housing, before Bombay Sapphire came in and took it in. I wasn’t surprised to discover that a lot of these buildings are protected.





Every drop of Bombay Sapphire is produced here and is then exported worldwide. They moved into Laverstoke Mill in 2014 and took guidance on how to convert the mill from a world renowned designer.

There were displays even before we got to the visitor reception.



When we arrived, we were greeted by the most wonderful and enthusiastic member of staff. She asked if we had a reservation and I said and that we’d seen the signs, so we thought we’d come and visit. She said she wasn’t sure if she could fit us on to a tour, given it was a Bank Holiday, which I understood and, to be honest, we were prepared to just grab some food at the bar and then head off again, when she said “just the two of you? Oh I can fit you in on the 1:15pm tour”, which would be leaving in 10 minutes’ time. Yay!

She told me that I’d need a wheelchair for the tour of the distillery, as you couldn’t have open toed shoes in there and my protective boot was technically open toed. I was fine with that, given that I’d just been in a wheelchair.

Next: inside a greenhouse!