Zulu the Donkey, Stoke Pero Church

Stoke Pero Church stands at an altitude of 310 metres above sea level and is the highest church on Exmoor.  The church was built in the 13th century on the site of an older church, but it was extensively rebuilt and restored 1897-98.  The only original features are the tower and the porch.  Unusually the church is not dedicated to a particular saint.

The restoration was paid for by Sir Thomas Acland (12th Baronet), the owner of the nearby Holnicote Estate.  Zulu the Donkey carried all the timber used to rebuild the roof up from Porlock twice a day.  His efforts are commemorated by a portrait drawn by Hope Bourne, which hangs on the wall in the church.  Hope Bourne was a writer and painter who lived a simple and mainly self-sufficient life at various locations on Exmoor.  She died in 2010 aged 91.

Stoke Pero church was restored again in 1955.

Hope Bourne's portrait of Zulu the donkey

Zulu the donkey

 

Stoke Pero Church

Nave and chancel of Stoke Pero Church

 

The Nave of Stoke Pero Church

 

Font decorated for harvest festival

Wibbly-wobbly Hedges, Montacute House

Montacute House (owned by the National Trust) has some particularly fine examples of wibbly-wobbly or "cloud" hedges.  The ones at Montacute are yew trees.  Apparently they were not originally designed to be in this shape but during the Second World War, presumably due to a shortage of staff, they were not clipped regularly.  Severe winters in the late 1940s brought heavy snow fall and the hedges buckled under the weight of the snow.  They became permanently misshapen and are now clipped to maintain the "cloud" appearance.

The National Trust's garden at Lytes Cary near Kingsdon has some smaller scale but beautifully clipped box cloud hedges.

A house facing the pebble beach at Porlock Weir has a short section of cloud hedge, although whether it is clipped this way deliberately I don't know.

Wibbly-wobbly hedge close up in the Cedar Lawn Garden

North Garden

Wibbly-wobbly hedge undergowing repair, August 2018

Wibbly-wobbly hedge and Orangery in the North Garden

Wibbly-wobbly hedge in the Cedar Lawn Garden

Wibbly-wobbly hedge and Lord Curzon's Pavilion, Cedar Lawn Garden

Wibbly-wobbly hedge and Montacute House from the Cedar Lawn

Montacute House and wibbly-wobbly hedge from a very parched Cedar Lawn, August 2018

Cloud hedge at Porlock Weir

Cloud hedge at Lytes Cary

Cloud hedge at Lytes Cary