Behind the ticket booth at Levens Hall, Cumbria, is an old black mulberry tree (Morus nigra) that vastly improves the visitor experience. The price to see the house and topiary garden is £15, yet I’m sure they could up this sum when the mulberries are in season and put the extra money towards some new lead flashing, or any number of small repairs I’m told big houses constantly require.

The Levens tree is a very old one and so the tourist, contentedly picking his way to forgetting about the inflated cost of the ticket, may also imagine himself picking in the company of ladies in straw bonnets and long-faced men in spats; old guests of Levens that were perhaps picking from the same tree countless Augusts before.

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