Family friendly

‘Can we go to Alton Towers? Please?’ Is there any request that strikes more gloom into the heart of a parent during the half-term holiday than that? The idea of spending an expensive day queuing for terrifying rides, in an environment of tacky, non-sustainable and old-fashioned consumerism, ensured that I steadfastly deprived my children of this ‘fun day out’ throughout their childhood.

‘Can we go to Alton Towers? Please?’ Is there any request that strikes more gloom into the heart of a parent during the half-term holiday than that? The idea of spending an expensive day queuing for terrifying rides, in an environment of tacky, non-sustainable and old-fashioned consumerism, ensured that I steadfastly deprived my children of this ‘fun day out’ throughout their childhood. I don’t regret it, except in one particular: Alton Towers in Staffordshire is a massive, neomedieval country house by Pugin, with a garden that still boasts broad lawns, lakes, mature ornamental trees and garden buildings of considerable splendour.

The house is now a shell, but much of the garden remains, far removed in space and time from the white-knuckle rides, the burger cafés and the candyfloss stands, and as peaceful as you could wish. The garden and grounds were laid out by Thomas Allason, the architect who designed Connaught Square; indeed, it retains its early Victorian ‘gardenesque’ style.

I spent a perfectly pleasant couple of hours in autumn in the Valley, which is densely planted with mature maples, conifers and rhododendrons, and boasts a fascinating, brilliantly painted Victorian Chinese pagoda rising from the lake at the bottom. To one side of the Valley is a run of magnificent, ornate if rather desolate conservatories of about 1820, designed by Robert Abraham.

On the day I visited, the topiary nearby was well clipped, the herbaceous borders colourful, and the annuals in containers as bright as jockeys’ silks, but the gardens still lacked allure.