
If you visit one National Trust house this Christmas, then make it Avebury Manor!
The volunteers spend hours transforming the Manor into a magical land of music, birdsong, lights and the cinnamon and spice scents of our favourite festival.
This year’s theme is The Twelve Days of Christmas and each room has this beautifully drawn and painted illustration which tells us the number we have reached. Follow the path to the door which is decorated with signs and lights and you are welcomed into the manor, where the magic begins.
The Twelve days unfold before you and you can only marvel at the skills of the volunteers who have created such a scene. The highlights for me were the three French hens nestled on the snooker table, the seven swans swimming on the windowsill on the stairs. It took 70 steps to make each swan. In the small bedroom on the left was a mysterious angel: was she left over from last year or had someone dropped her by the bed?
In the Queen Anne bedroom there were nine beautiful dancing ladies, each one wearing a carefully sewn dress of beautiful and brightly coloured fabric.
The next room featured the ten lords a leaping, they looked pretty crazy and abandoned!
At the heart of this was the Making room and “How we did it” so that if we had the time and the skills we could try to recreate some of the exhibits.
Down the stairs decorated with drums and music and along the corridor, where the contents of the cabinets told the whole story, with intricate paper replicas of all the delights of the Twelve days.
Into the kitchen to see the gold rings glistening in the windows and the astonishing cake on the table.
What a wonderful start to Christmas!

The UTRNTA have supported this with a donation to help the volunteers in their work. Below is their letter of thanks.
Dear Mr Richardson and Mr Beer,
Donation for Christmas display at Avebury On behalf of all the team at the National Trust at Avebury, I wanted to send you a wholehearted ‘Thank you’ you for your Association’s very generous donation to support our team of volunteers and staff to deliver a beautiful Christmas display at Avebury. Following last year’s success of ‘The Nutcracker’, our volunteers have already started to create this year’s offer around the theme of ‘Twelve days of Christmas’.
Your donation couldn’t come at a better time, as it allows us to plan in this additional resource to develop and deliver an offer that meets, hopefully even exceeds, the expectations of our visitor following last year’s success.
Your generous donation is also a wonderful gesture towards our team, highlighting how much Avebury’s Christmas offer is loved and enjoyed across the region.
Thank you for your support.
Yours sincerely Eva Stuetzenberger Visitor Operations & Experience Manager
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