Make A Friend Date For Tea At This Mansion Overlooking Narragansett Bay

Pinkies Up For Tea At This Gorgeous Manse With Incredible Gardens

The Kitchen at Blithewold is open through October 15th and this time around they are offering Afternoon Tea or Lunch. (Some of the dishes are actually made using veggies from the estate’s own gardens, talk about farm to table.)

Sure, you could go in October, but quite honestly, walking the 7 award winning gardens (singled out by Yankee Magazine as some of the Best Public Gardens in New England) there during the summer is such a treat.

I mean, the Rose Garden alone can be traced back to 1900 and includes a particular one that many historians believe could have originated at Mount Vernon, GW’s Virginia estate that has bragging rights as “the most visited” property of its kind in the continental United States.

It’s all very Jane Austen meets Kathryn Bradley Hole, an author of an important book about English gardens and gardening.

If you opt for high tea — featuring a pot, scones with jam and clotted cream, and a sweet — served either on the porch overlooking The Bay or in one of the first floor rooms inside the manor house (which is Blithewold 2 because the original burnt down in 1906 and was subsequently rebuilt), you can actually order iced tea which is probably not the way it rolls at Balmoral, Clarence House or Kensington Palace but whatevs.

Frankly it’s the closest I’ve gotten to an English countryside experience ever. For the record, even though the editors at Graydon Carter’s Airmail have said The Cotswolds are so five years ago, that area remains on my travel wish list.

And don’t leave without getting your photo snapped near the Moon Gate, one of only two that I’ve been able to locate in Rhode Island.

Or popping in to the gift shop that’s stocked with tons of darling things.

To try your luck at getting a table for you and your inner circle, go to their site.

Find Blithewold at 101 Ferry Road in Bristol, Rhode Island.

As always, if you go after reading this, please let them know you were inspired by Patty J and PatttyJ.com.