At Sugnall there are a wide range of activities that our visitors can enjoy throughout the year, including:
Tours & Talks
Our guided tours are becoming very popular following their launch in 2011:
We offer a comprehensive guided tour with refreshments prepared in our kitchen using produce from the walled kitchen garden.
As well as tours, talks can be arranged for group and organisations about the trials and tribulations of rescuing an historic walled kitchen garden. The talks last for approximately 40 minutes during which time we will take you back to 1737, when the garden was built, and explain how the garden has evolved during the 275 years, into a 21st century garden, using historic images and up to date aerial photographs.
Call the Estate Office on 01785 850820 to book tours and talks.
Walking
Our network of paths and tracks, starting from the lane outside the walled kitchen garden, takes walkers right to the heart of our rural idyll. We have put in several kissing gates to extend our network and provide a number of circular walks of different lengths past the pools and, in April/May, through the bluebells. Ask at the walled kitchen garden for maps, and enjoy a cup of tea there Easter to end September..
Nature walks
The estate leases Jackson’s Coppice and a boggy former hay meadow above the pool at Walkmill to the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. These contrasting areas are full of interest and were together one of the Trust’s earliest reserves, being called ‘Jackson’s Coppice and the Marsh’. Leaflets are available in the Tea Room.
Together with the Trust and a grant from the Lottery Fund, the estate led the way to cleaning the silt out of the Walk Mill Pool in 2007. Part of the work was to form a small car park and to construct a boardwalk around the wettest parts of the meadow.
Take the lane past the walled kitchen garden towards Walkmill but turn right in front of the stone wall of the miller’s house, and there is a small car park a few hundred yards further on. Walkers can reach the reserve via the walks through the estate woodlands and then by turning right along the public footpath to Walk Mill. This brings you out opposite the stone wall and lane which leads to the reserve.
Jackson’s Coppice is ancient woodland on a steep hillside carpeted with bluebells in May and with one of the largest badger setts in the county. It is a surviving fragment of Gratewood, 1000 acres of wildwood owned by the Bishop of Lichfield in medieval times, most of which is now grazing land.
The boggy area was all part of the millpool when this was created in the 13th century. Over the centuries it silted up and was reclaimed as a hay meadow except for the reeds immediately above the pool, called The Boggs. Despite drainage ditches, the meadow was always wet and the hay had to be cut by hand. It was abandoned in the middle of the 20th century, becoming invaded by willows and alder, but is now under the Trust’s management.
View the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust website for full details.
Horse Riding
For horse riders there are around 20 miles of rural routes and bridleways to enjoy without having to cross one main road. This offers the ultimate freedom and total security, and is the ideal environment for the younger or less experienced rider
Fishing
From 2013 we will be offering licences for anyone who enjoys coarse fishing in peaceful settings. We will be offering licences by the day, or longer, by arrangement. For more information on when the licences will be available please contact the Estate Secretary on 01785 850820, or info@sugnall.co.uk
