A selection of our favourite historic houses in England, from medieval castles to Edwardian Arts-and-Crafts architecture.
Kingston Lacy House & Estate
One of Dorset’s grandest houses, Kingston Lacy was the home of the Bankes family from 1665 until 1981, when Ralph Bankes bequeathed the magnificent 8,500-acre estate to the National Trust. Today it draws a steady flow of visitors for its sumptuous interior, outstanding collections of art and Egyptian artefacts, and serene grounds.
The house was built in 1665 for Sir Ralph Bankes after the family’s original home, Corfe Castle, was destroyed by Cromwell’s troops during the Civil War. It was significantly altered in 1835 at the behest of William Bankes, who employed the noted architect Sir Charles Barry (whose other projects included work on the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge) to refurbish it in flamboyant Italian Renaissance style. The house’s lavish interior is in large part the legacy of William Bankes, who was an avid traveller, collector and Egyptologist and who enjoyed displaying his trinkets at the family home. From 1841 he lived in Italy, where he had fled to avoid prosecution for homosexual acts, but he continued to collect and send back furniture and fittings for the house, and may have made the occasional clandestine visit to his beloved Kingston Lacy.
© Tabbipix/Wikimedia Commons
A grand marble staircase leads from the entrance hall; William Bankes bought it in Italy and it was part of Barry’s brief in the refurbishment that he alter the house to accommodate it. Perched in niches in the walls on the first floor loggia are bronze statues of King Charles I, Sir John Bankes and Dame Mary Bankes. Dame Mary is depicted holding the keys to Corfe Castle, which she successfully defended during the Civil War until Cromwell’s men gained access via subterfuge and destroyed the building. The real keys to Corfe Castle hang over the fireplace in the library, which is adorned with family portraits and Guido Reni’s ceiling fresco, The Separation of Night and Day.
Still sporting their 18th-century design are the library and saloon, created when Henry Bankes (William’s father) renovated the house in the 1780s. The saloon contains some of the house’s exceptional art collection, including paintings by Rubens and Titian. William Bankes built the oppressively flamboyant Spanish room to display his Spanish art collection; the room is a monument to opulence, with gilded leather wall hangings and a gilded ceiling taken from a Venetian palace.
The Egyptian room contains objects Bankes collected while on expeditions in Egypt and represents the largest private collection of Egyptian artefacts in the UK. The Egyptian theme extends to the grounds of the house, where an obelisk from the 2nd century bc has stood since 1827. Its journey from Egypt to Kingston Lacy reportedly took 20 years and a team of 19 horses was needed to haul it into place.
The house is surrounded by formal gardens and 250 acres of landscaped parkland, grazed by Red Devon cattle. The garden features an Edwardian Japanese area and a Victorian fernery, which contains over 20 varieties of ferns. Paths lead from the formal gardens through the park and woodland, awash with daffodils and bluebells in spring. Longer walks, bridleways and cycleways lead around the estate, and are mapped in a leaflet available at Kingston Lacy. The red-brick stables of 1880 house a restaurant which serves a wealth of local food, including the estate’s Red Devon beef.
Read more in Slow Travel Dorset
Coombe Trenchard
This elegant Edwardian Arts-and-Crafts house was built in 1906 by friends of Sabine Baring-Gould, while he was living next door in Lewtrenchard Manor. They had been renting the old rectory on the Lewtrenchard estate for some time; when Sabine invited them to buy that portion of the land they did so, demolished the rectory and began building the current house, using Arts and Crafts architect Walter Sarel and Devon church builders Dart & Francis.
© Coombe Trenchard
The interior has fine oak panelling, ornate ceilings, gracious rooms and period furnishings – and rather surprisingly an ingenious disappearing wall, thought to be unique, which can be slid down to the basement, rather in the manner of a sash window, to make room for large gatherings. When the current owners bought the property in 2007 the large gardens, originally designed and laid out by Walter Sarel, were so neglected that many features had vanished beneath the overgrowth; now, after a huge amount of work, the forgotten paths, glades, woodland garden, terraces, steps and other structures are back on view.
The gardens can be visited through the annual National Gardens Scheme, and a Sculpture Trail is open there on summer weekends. Otherwise they are not regularly open to the public but private group visits can be arranged. The house is mostly open for cream teas in the afternoons. Private group visits to some of the rooms can be arranged by request. It’s also accessible through Invitation to View (www.invitationtoview.co.uk), a company that organises visits to stately homes. And there are four ultra-comfortable B&B bedrooms.
Read more in Slow Travel South Devon & Dartmoor
Blickling Hall
A couple of miles north of Aylsham, Blickling Hall has been in the care of the National Trust since 1940. Anne Boleyn may well have been born here, although there seems to be some uncertainty, but the building that you see standing today dates from after her time, the 1620s, and is a superb example of Jacobean architecture. The house attracts a large number of visitors, as do the formal gardens, but what cheapskates like myself often prefer is simply to walk (for free) the miles of footpaths that run through the estate.
© TourNofolk
All manner of possible walks start either from near to the entrance or, further away, from the car park at Itteringham Common. Approaching the park from the Great Wood to the west allows for super views across oak-studded parkland to the lake and Blickling Hall beyond. You should also definitely check out The Pyramid, marked on most maps as a mausoleum. This is actually both of those things: a 45-foot high, pyramid-shaped mausoleum that holds the grave of John, the 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire, who died in 1793. It’s all rather esoteric and Egyptian in character, and really quite a bizarre sight tucked away in this corridor of conifers and easily missed.
Read more in Slow Travel Norfolk
Ickworth House
Amid sugar beet fields a few miles outside Bury in the village of Horringer, Ickworth House is an extraordinary rotunda of a house that is now in the ownership of the National Trust. It was built at the beginning of the 19th century by the fourth Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry as a storehouse for his art collection and estranged wife and family; but some of the intended works of art never arrived because they were taken by Napoleon. Notwithstanding this setback, a collection was amassed that includes Gainsborough, Titian and Hogarth paintings as well as a vast array of Regency furniture. The exhibition in the basement beneath the rotunda depicts 1930s life in domestic service at Ickworth. The surrounding park, open throughout the year, was landscaped by Capability Brown between 1769 and 1776, although the basic design goes back to around 1700 when the first Earl of Bristol carved out the landscape to his own requirement after the original Ickworth Hall was demolished in 1701. A herd of deer was introduced in 1706. Also seek out the Italian-style garden with its terrace walk created in 1821, the walled kitchen garden and the Victorian stumpery that contains a large fern collection and stones from the Devil’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.
Read more in Slow Travel Suffolk
Markenfield Hall
One of the best-preserved – and most beautiful – medieval houses in Britain today, Markenfield Hall is most definitely someone’s house, and that is why it works its spell on me. With the exception of a spot of tinkering over the centuries, it has remained largely unaltered since it was built in the early 14th century for the de Markenfield family. Completely surrounded by a fashionable moat (it wouldn’t keep out many marauding armies!) and walled courtyard, this wonderful crenellated house has seen a remarkable and tragic history, its walls, rooms and tiny chapel playing a major part in the 1569 Rising of the North, a battle in direct rebellion to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. This caused the house – and the family’s – downfall.
© Markenfield Hall
Today Markenfield Hall is once again owned by descendants of the Markenfield family. They have restored the magnificent Great Hall, winning the Historic Houses Association Restoration Project of the Year in 2008 (beating Harewood House, arguably one of Yorkshire’s grandest attractions, in the process). Standing in the courtyard, listening to the history that befell the property while glancing at the giant petals bursting opening on the magnolia that climbs the wall by the entrance way, you can almost hear the whispers and the chatter of disgruntled Catholics plotting against the forwarding armies. Markenfield Hall’s tiny chapel, restored alongside the Great Hall, is unique too, especially given its past history; it is licensed to hold both Catholic and Protestant services, even if there is only room to fit a dozen or so people in the congregation.
The hall is only open to the public on certain afternoons throughout the year, when you can tour the courtyard and four rooms (including the Great Hall and chapel). I really urge you to visit but it’s advisable to check the website for opening times. Guided group visits can be booked all year round. The Ripon Rowel Walk runs past the moat and gatehouse. Note there are no refreshments at the hall.
Read more in Slow Travel Yorkshire Dales
Castle Howard
Castle Howard still does what it was always designed to do – dominate and impress. What is in effect one building is the focal point of the whole area, having for instance more attached shops than the nearby villages of Terrington, Welburn, Bulmer, Crambe, Whitwell and Coneysthorpe, put together. As for its origin, well I like to imagine the scene. It is 1699 and Charles Howard, the third Earl of Carlisle, is in London and sitting in the Trumpet Tavern with other members of the Kit Kat Club. Drinking brandy with him is a chancer, ex-soldier and playwright John Vanbrugh, and they are discussing the Earl’s intention to build a house on his Yorkshire estate.
Vanbrugh: So Charles, who is going to design this big house of yours?
Charles: I don’t know. None of the chaps I have so far have come up with anything I like.
Vanbrugh: Really ... now that is interesting. Charles, I’ll do it for you.
Charles: Would you? Splendid! How many similar projects have you done before, John?
Vanbrugh: Erm ... not many, but what say, how difficult can it be?
Charles: John, exactly how many buildings have you ever designed?
Vanbrugh: Well, none – but I am a quick learner ...
© Chris J Parker/NYMNPA
It reads like a Blackadder script, with Rowan Atkinson as Vanbrugh, Hugh Laurie as the Earl, and Mrs Miggins hovering nearby with pies, but astonishingly it is more or less true. Quite how Vanbrugh managed to convince Charles Howard he was the right man for the job is anyone’s guess but he did, and over the next ten years their joint dream became a magnificent reality, probably with more than a little help from a lowly clerk of works who happened to be Nicholas Hawksmoor, one of Christopher Wren’s apprentices.
Oddly, the iconic great dome, such a signature feature of Castle Howard today, was not part of the original design, but added almost as an afterthought well after the building work had begun, and was reconstructed after World War II. Vanbrugh died in 1726 and the third Earl followed in 1738, but their work was continued by two subsequent earls and various architects and landscape gardeners, during the rest of the 18th century. Castle Howard in its entirety, that is the mansion, park, lakes, temples, mausoleum, road and monuments, was complete by the start of the 19th century.
All that has happened since then has been tinkering really, and a massive repair project after a fire in the main building in 1940. World War II nearly saw the end of Castle Howard. First the disastrous fire reduced the mansion house itself to a burnt-out shell and the dome was destroyed, then the heirs to the title began to drop like flies in the war in Europe. Mark, the eldest son, died on the Normandy beaches and the next in line, Christopher, was killed flying with the Dambusters. Things were looking so bad for the estate that the trustees began to sell off the mansion’s contents, assuming that it would never be lived in again. Enter a hero; George, the third son, returned wounded from the war and turned everything around. He moved into the house and set about the mammoth task of repairing the damage and restoring the building to its former glory, dome and all. The house and gardens were opened to the public in 1952 and the estate has not looked back since. The palatial grandeur of the house, inside and out, is instantly familiar to anyone who has seen the filmed version of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, either the wonderful 1981 TV 11-hour adaptation or the 2008 movie.
Today, Castle Howard is a multi-million-pound business run by a private company, of which two of George Howard’s sons, Nicholas and Simon, are the directors – and business it very definitely is. At the stable courtyard, your first port of call if arriving by car or bus, you’ll find a café and five castle shops selling books, gifts, local farm produce, plants and chocolate. Tours and talks, constantly changing exhibitions, events and outdoor concerts are on offer throughout the year; in fact no end of expensive things to do with lots of other people.
The grounds are big enough to escape the crowds and get lost in. Public rights of way thread through the wider estate, allowing you to get some choice glimpses for free of the house, the majestic 20-column mausoleum, and Palladian splendour of Temple of the Four Winds from a distance. The hamlet of Coneysthorpe, built for estate workers around an oblong green, makes a handy starting point for walks, with scope for getting close up to the house and lake to the south and a fine section of the Ebor Way to the north, which offers choice views of the Vale of Pickering.
There is wildlife here, especially around the lakes where there are breeding flocks of greylag and Canada geese all the year. The Great Lake is even more of a magnet for birdwatchers in winter when large numbers of migrant waterfowl arrive; pochards, wigeon, goosander and goldeneye brightening up the chilly season. For those interested in furry, as well as feathery, flyers, some of Castle Howard’s ancient hollow oak trees are important roost sites for noctule bats.
Castle Howard has a high season (March–October and December) when the house is open, while in other months just the gardens are available. There is no getting around it, entrance fees are very high so consequently many people don’t get past the free café and shop area, making do with distant views of the house. Fortunately those wanting more affordable parkland walking can find it in the nearby arboretum at half the price.
Read more in Slow Travel North York Moors & Yorkshire Wolds
Blenheim Palace
Brushing up against Woodstock is the huge Blenheim Estate in the middle of which is Blenheim Palace, the seat of the Duke of Marlborough aka the Spencer-Churchill family. We’re currently on duke number 11, but it was the first duke who was granted the building of the house as a gift from Queen Anne following his heroic victory over the French at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. The hour of triumph is commemorated in one of the palace’s finest treasures, the Blenheim Tapestry, just one of ten ‘Victory’ woven masterpieces.
© Jvhertum/Wikimedia Commons
The house is itself a masterpiece of Baroque, grand in scale and with all the pomp and stature inside and out that you’d expect from a status symbol used as a declaration of victory. In 1874 Sir Winston Churchill was born here, an unexpectedly early arrival while his mother was visiting relations. It’s also where he later proposed to his wife. There is a large, permanent exhibition on his life and work focused around the room in which he was born. Churchill, together with his wife and parents, is buried in the churchyard in the neighbouring village of Bladon, all their gravestones facing towards the Blenheim Estate.
While the house and grounds – including the Grand Bridge – were originally designed by the now celebrated, but at the time unqualified, John Vanbrugh, under the watchful eye of Nicholas Hawksmoor, the 2,000-acre grounds were later landscaped by Capability Brown. He created the two large lakes through which the River Glyme, a tributary of the Evenlode, flows; the two rivers meet on the estate.
Read more in Slow Cotswolds
Seaton Delaval Hall
Seaton Delaval Hall has become one of the region’s most visited historic properties, celebrated for its formal gardens and exterior by Sir John Vanbrugh (the most famous country house architect in England during the early 1700s), who died a few years before the mansion – one of his greatest – was completed in 1730. A fire destroyed the interior of the central block in 1822 (the heat was so intense that the roof leading was said to have ‘poured down like water’) and the great hall and saloon remain gutted, but you gain a strong sense of how grand and lavish the entrance must have been before the disaster.
© Alan J. White/Wikimedia Commons
Armless busts and statues line the walls and a wrought-iron balcony frames the first-floor landing. Either side of the portico are the stables (east wing) and kitchen (west wing). To the rear of the central block, the south portico opens with an expansive view of countryside. Walk around the side to reach the beautiful gardens: formal hedging, roses, herbaceous borders and a magnificent weeping ash planted at the time the manor was built. Children tend to make a beeline for the natural climbing structures in the woodland play area. The only furnished part of the house today is the west wing which was later used by the family. One of the highlights is a row of exquisitely embroidered early 18th-century chairs. Portraits on a nearby wall include that of the only male heir of Sir John Delaval who died before his father. Apparently the young man was already a sickly creature when he was kicked in the genitals by a maid whom he had assaulted. He never recovered from his injuries. The boy is buried in the church at Doddington in Lincolnshire which was painted black for some 25 years after his death.
Near the hall is the Norman Church of Our Lady on the edge of the National Trust estate. It dates to 1102 and was for 700 years the private chapel of the Delaval family. It’s unusual in having two Norman arches spanning the interior.
Read more in Slow Travel Northumberland
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