Christmas at Bateman's National Trust, East Sussex

Bateman's is the former home of the renowned author Rudyard Kipling. It is a beautiful sandstone house surrounded by gardens, farmland and the beautiful rolling East Sussex countryside. I love that you can acess most of the house and get a real feel for how Rudyard must have lived. Walking through his study is particularly special. 

Christmas Theme 2019

The theme for Christmas 2019 was Rudyards book series, the 'Just So Stories' which were aimed at younger children. Each room was themed around a particular story and this worked really well. I have visited Bateman's a couple of times before and this special theming added an extra something for this visit.

WWI Weekend at Bateman's, National Trust, East Sussex

Last weekend on a whim we decided to head over to Bateman's, a beautiful National Trust site just about a half-hour from our home. My husband had seen a tweet that they were having a World War I encampment weekend complete with a mess tent, field ambulance, planes and more.

So without there being any extra cost to go along (just the regular entry or your membership if you have already joined), we headed over there. We could see it would be busy as we headed into an overflow car park but it was all managed well and it only took minutes to park and get settled. There was also no parking cost, which is unusual for NT sites.

We've been to Bateman's before, back in May 2014 I wrote about our fun family day exploring the house of Rudyard Kipling, author of the Jungle Book but this time we didn't even get into the house or to explore the grounds too much as the focus of our visit was the WWI re-enactments. We are intending to head back again though in the near future as there are loads of estate walks that we want to take, the scenery there is just stunning.

The camp was open from 11am - 4pm each day and you could easily spend a few hours there as there were so many ex-soldiers and historians who were delighted to speak to you and help you to understand what life was like back in the early 1900s. There was also a central roped off area for displays and demonstration and the things happening here changed throughout the day.

Family visit to Batemans - National Trust

Back in February, we bought a family membership to the National Trust and we have been enjoying some days out together exploring our local area. This time we headed to Batemans, which was the home of the Jungle Book author Rudyard Kipling. We went there purely on location as it is pretty close to our home and we only had about 3 or 4 hours all in, I have to be honest and say we did not expect it to thrill the children as looking at the National Trust web pages it appeared to have less on offer for children than many of the national trust properties, no child-specific activity/ trail or play area available.

I'm pleased to say though that even on a regular day our 6 and 10-year-old kids had a good time. I really love that all these kind of places we are visiting are not only teaching our kids some valuable history but also giving them precious lessons in making their own fun, finding the beauty in nature and being quiet, calm and respectful in historic places.

I do think that pictures speak a thousand words, so take a look at this stunning property, gardens and mill -

The staff in the mill were really good at chatting to the kids and explaining the processes and how things would have worked in years gone by.

So much space to walk, run and explore. I just loved all the greenery -

I often think it is when you allow children time to just be that they have the most fun, whilst we sat and had coffee and I photographed some birds the kids ran off to play a type of charades games and it was so nice to watch them together giggling.

and also to witness their companionable silence as they watched the fish jumping out the water -

We had a super family day at Batemans and I'm sure we will be back again in the summer to take one of the many country walks.

We also visited Batemans in 2017 for a WWI themed weekend, which was amazing and for a Christmas family visit in 2020.

Check out all our other National Trust reviews over here.