Fir Tree Cottage

e-mail:
firtreecottage
@hotmail.co.uk

Telephone:
+44 (0) 121 354 9834
+44 (0) 7968 294784

Fir Tree Cottage
2 The Green
Stretton-on-Fosse
Gloucestershire
GL56 9SQ
United Kingdom

One of the National Trust's most important art collections can be found in this house, built in 1695 of mellow local stone, purchased and remodelled in 1927–29 by Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted, who was Chairman of Shell, 1921–46, and son of the company's founder. Upton contains his outstanding collection of English and continental Old Master paintings over three floors, including works by Hogarth, Stubbs, Romney, Canaletto, Brueghel and El Greco; Brussels tapestries; French Sèvres porcelain; Chelsea and Derby figures and 18th-century furniture. There is an exhibition of paintings and publicity posters commissioned by Shell during Viscount Bearsted's chairmanship; also Lady Bearsted's restored bedroom and Art Deco bathroom. The garden is very fine, with lawns, terraces, orchard, herbaceous borders, kitchen garden, ornamental pools and an interesting 1930s water garden, together with the National Collection of Asters.