The county of Bedfordshire in the east  midlands boasts a rich and ancient history.  

Today, close to the town of Silsoe, lies  a stunning estate, 90 acres boasting  

everything from lush woodland walkways to ornate  marble fountains and a picturesque pavilion.  

And in the midst of it all, a grand  mansion: the Grade I listed Wrest Park.

What I find so wonderful about Wrest Park is this  sense of contrast and really it's the contrast  

between the house and the landscape gardens. When  you look at the house, this is in the style of  

French chateau taken from France and put here in  the middle of these fantastic landscape gardens.  

The house dates from about the 1830s but the  gardens themselves began to be landscaped in the  

mid 1600s and then they were further developed by  that most famous of landscape gardeners, Lancelot  

'Capability' Brown in the mid 1700s. So for  almost 400 years this landscape has been shaped,  

it's been smoothed, it's been planted, it's been  designed to fulfill the needs of status, fashion  

and the styles of the various times and I think  for me this is where that sense of a contrast  

really becomes most apparent. When we stand  at the far end of the gardens and we look back  

towards the house and we see a house that's  very much of its time and then when we stand  

on the terrace looking out from the  house into these fantastic vistas  

we get this sense of the quintessential English  landscape garden so there's this dynamic tension  

which I think is remarkable and  really helps to set the place off.

When we look at a stunning house such as this  it's easy to think of it as a museum piece  

and to forget that this  was a home and on this site  

lives were lived for centuries  before the mansion itself was built.

This beautiful house was the home of one  particular family for multiple generations.

Wrest Park was the home to the De Grey family for  many, many centuries. In the later 17th century,  

Amabel Countess of Kent who  married into the family was known  

as the Good Countess because of the work that she  did to support the local poor. Just one example  

is the fact that she bought the local pub when the  existing owner was struggling and then leased it  

back to them, keen perhaps to ensure that there  were still facilities in the local community.  

This philanthropy continued and we've got evidence  of it going right into the 19th century. The  

family were known for giving prizes and even  giving clothing to pupils at the local school.  

But in 1914, Wrest Park became a hospital caring  for wounded and convalescent soldiers from the  

First World War and it was a hospital that was  paid for by the family. It lasted as a hospital  

until 1916 when unfortunately a fire damaged  the house and really began a decline in the  

fortune of the house. But it ends a story that is  really characterised by this idea of good works  

and charity on the part of the family to  the people who lived in the local area.

This grand estate calls for a local song with a  grand history. Connecting with the tradition of  

alms-giving from the master and mistresses of  well-to-do houses to local springtime carolers,  

the Bedforeshire May Song is a local  variant of the timeless Mayday carol  

which was once sung right across the UK. Here in  the voice of singer Dila Vardar, these days we  

associate singing carols with Christmas but in  the past there were numerous times of the year  

when villagers would go door to door asking  for charity. May songs such as thing one were  

accompanied by a ritual in which the singers  known as mayers would leave ornate branches of  

hawthorn at the doors of houses they visited as  they exchanged songs for drinks, food donations  

and even some silver coins. This song speaks of  the natural cycles of death and regeneration,  

so very in keeping with Wrest Park's  history as the site of a military hospital.