Layer Marney Tower Beer and Music Festival

After a morning cycling round the countryside doing the Tour of Tendring, a relaxing afternoon was the order of the day, and we picked well in heading off to Layer Marney Tower for their mini beer and music festival.

The weather was sunny, if slightly windy, but the central courtyard is a suntrap, and a lot of people were soaking up the sun, sampling the beer (as provided by the Red Fox Brewery from Coggeshall) and listening to the music.

There was a range of music on offer. We caught the end of a large choir (clearly a Gareth Malone-inspired group), a jazz quartet who managed to play about 50 different instruments between them during their short set (to the extent that it was actually a bit of a distraction from the music!), and we left just as a duo started up with some more contemporary tunes. And we had hoped for a bit more food to be available, especially as we had brought along one of our sons on the expectation that there there would be a bbq or similar to soak up the beer!

The house and the gardens are lovely. They aren’t the largest of their kind in Essex, so don’t plan on making a whole day of it, but you can spend a couple of hours wandering around the well kept gardens (loved the knot garden), and climbing up the stairs to the top of the tower, where you get a great view of the surrounding countryside.

The church is also worth looking at, and there are also goats and lambs to be oohed over, and a climbing frame for children. Here are a few pix :

More information about Layer Marney Tower at their website. And sign up for our e-newsletter so that we can help you keep track of events like this across Essex.