In the 15th century, additional repairs were undertaken and a new chamber was built in 1425. During the Wars of the Roses, Edward IV ordered £200 be spent on repairs to the castle, but afterwards it seems to have fallen into disrepair. Duchy records for the honour, show that the castle had a constable and a porter in the 1480s. A survey in 1602 described the castle as very ruinous, warning that buildings were very likely to fall down, with another in 1608, stating that parts of the decayed buildings had actually collapsed.
In 1644, during the Civil War, Prince Rupert left a garrison at the castle on his way to relieve the parliamentarian siege of York. They repaired the main gateway and stocked the castle with provisions, only to abandon it following the royalist loss at the Battle of Marston Moor. When the Lancashire militia was ordered to disband in 1649, they refused, occupying the castle for a brief period in a dispute over unpaid wages. The same year Clitheroe was among a number of castles that parliament decided should be 'slighted' to prevent further use, although it is uncertain what demolition work actually resulted.
In 1660 the castle and its honour were given as a reward to the first Duke of Albemarle by Charles II for helping him to regain the crown. From the late 17th century, the castle became the residence of the steward of the honour. Occupants of the castle include John Barcroft of Colne (who died there in 1782).


The Birmingham Back to Backs (also known as Court 15) are the city's last surviving court of back-to-back houses. They are preserved as examples of the thousands of similar houses that were built around shared courtyards, for the rapidly increasing population of Britain's expanding industrial towns. They are a very particular sort of British terraced housing. This sort of housing was deemed unsatisfactory, and the passage of the Public Health Act 1875 meant that no more were built; instead byelaw terraced houses took their place. This court, at 50–54 Inge Street and 55–63 Hurst Street, is now operated as a historic house museum by the National Trust.
Numerous back-to-back houses, two or three storeys high, were built in Birmingham during the 19th century. Most of these houses were concentrated in inner-city areas such as Ladywood, Handsworth, Aston, Small Heath and Highgate. Most were still in quite good condition in the early 20th century and also prior to their demolition. By the early 1970s, almost all of Birmingham's back-to-back houses had been demolished. The occupants were rehoused in new council houses and flats, some in redeveloped inner-city areas, while the majority moved to new housing estates such as Castle Vale and Chelmsley Wood.


Court 14 was completed in 1802 by Joseph Willmore, a silversmith. It consisted of six front and eleven back houses with some workshops on the larger southern end of the building plot. When opened, it was known as Willmore's Court but was later renamed Court 14 Inge Street. It has since been demolished.
At this time, John Willmore, a carpenter and joiner, constructed a house and workshop for himself. By 1809, the undeveloped remainder of the plot consisted of two nailer's workshops and a cooper's workshop with a knacker's yard behind. The Hurst Street frontage was filled with sheds. By 1821, No. 50 Inge Street/ 1 Court 15 had been converted into a pair of back to backs. No. 52 Inge Street/ 2 Court 15 and No. 54 Inge Street/3 Court 15 were built about 1830. The terrace along Hurst Street was constructed in 1831.


By the end of the 18th century, the land where the houses are now located was owned by several families. The Inge family, after whom Inge Street is named, owned the land on the west side of the street whilst the Gooch family owned the land to the east side, where the back to backs were built. The plot of land was 50 yards long and 20 yards wide.
In 1789, Sir Thomas Gooch leased the land to John Willmore, a local toymaker. It was agreed that within a year, Willmore should construct two or more large houses at a total cost, including the outbuildings, of no less than £700. Willmore failed to do this and Court 15, as well as Court 14 adjacent, were built by his successors who remained on the street throughout the 19th century. When John Willmore died, the land was split between his sons Joseph and John Willmore, leading to the constructions looking different.


The court consists of three pairs of back-to-back houses on Inge Street and a terrace of five blind back houses on Hurst Street, in the form of an L-shaped footprint. All the buildings are three storeys tall with one room on each floor.
No. 50 Inge Street/ 1 Court 15, the first to be constructed, is the tallest and the largest in the court. Some evidence exists to indicate that it was originally a single dwelling but it has been occupied for most of its life as a pair of back to backs. Evidence to show that it may have originally been one house is available through the layout of the attic. The attic runs across the whole depth of the pair of houses, but was never divided and can only be reached from the back house of No. 1 Court 15 where the surviving staircase is of much better quality than any remaining in the other houses in Court 15. On the second floor, there is a now-blocked doorway in the spine wall between the two houses indicating that the floors to both houses were both accessible. At this level too, No. 50 Inge Street has been split into two rooms by a partition wall. The smaller of the two rooms is unheated and lit by a casement window. There are two tall chimney stacks, one for each house, in the pair.
The tunnel entrance to the court runs between No. 52 Inge Street/ 2 Court 15 and No. 54 Inge Street/ 3 Court 15. Each pair of houses shares a single chimney set on the ridge of the roof. The two back houses each have a bay window to allow more light into the ground floor room. The lower floors to these houses have been divided by two spine walls. The upper floors are divided by one spine wall.
In No. 52 Inge Street/ 2 Court 15 only one original stairway remains — from the ground to the first floor in the front house. The stair in No. 54 Inge Street has been removed at ground floor level but in No. 3 Court 15 the complete staircase survives.
The rear entrances to Nos. 55, 57 and 59 are gained through a very narrow tunnel entry from Court 15. A staircase on the back wall of each house led up to the first and second floors. The houses were lit by windows on the Hurst Street side and heated by shared chimney stacks. No. 63 Hurst Street shared a chimney with No. 65 Hurst Street, the front house of a pair of back to backs which were part of Court 2 Hurst Street, now demolished. No. 55 Hurst Street has a large bay window at first floor level overlooking Inge Street, which is an early feature. All the houses in the terrace have late 20th century shop fronts, replacing earlier ones which were installed about 1900.
Court 15 may have originally had a water pump in the courtyard, though this is not known for certain. By the 1880s, a single tap had been installed. The brick paved yard contains an open drain running in front of the three back houses. In the 1930s, the two washhouses and water closets (outdoor flush toilets) were constructed on the site of the workshops and outbuildings in the courtyard.


Mount Edgcumbe House is a stately home in south-east Cornwall and is a Grade II listed building, whilst its gardens and parkland are listed as Grade I in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.
Mount Edgcumbe Country Park is situated in the parish of Maker on the Rame Peninsula, overlooking Plymouth Sound; its main entrance is in the village of Cremyll.
It was the principal seat of the Edgcumbe family since Tudor times, many of whom served as MP before Richard Edgcumbe was raised to the peerage as Baron Edgcumbe in 1742. His 2nd son, George, was advanced to the rank of Earl in 1789.


Sir Richard Edgcumbe built the original house between 1547 and 1553 and it is said to have served as inspiration for architect Robert Smythson's Wollaton Hall. It was completely gutted during World War II by German bombs in 1941, with the restoration process beginning in 1958 at the 6th Earl's instigation. In 1971, the 7th Earl sold the estate to Cornwall County Council and Plymouth City Council, and it has been open to the public since 1988. Its interiors have been restored to 18th-century styles.
The Mount Edgcumbe House estate continues to be jointly owned by Cornwall Council and Plymouth City Council and is one of South East Cornwall's most popular historic tourist attractions. The Country Park, on the Rame Peninsula, is the earliest landscaped grounds in Cornwall and is very popular with walkers: one can walk from the Cremyll Ferry through the property to the villages of Kingsand and Cawsand. The Park, open to visitors every day all through the year from 8 am till dusk, houses the National Camellia Collection. A classic car show is held annually in the grounds, hosted by the Friends of Mount Edgcumbe and a variety of other events, which include art classes with Louise Courtnell, theatre performances, and a forestry school, are also held there.
However, the House and the adjoining Earl's Garden are only open to visitors during the summer months, from the beginning of April until the end of September.


Lullingstone Castle is a historic manor house, set in an estate in the village of Lullingstone and the civil parish of Eynsford in the English county of Kent. It has been inhabited by members of the Hart Dyke family for twenty generations including current owner Tom Hart Dyke.


The house, now known as Lullingstone Castle (though it in no way resembles a castle) is a Grade II* listed building which is built in red brick in three storeys. Traces of the original 16th-century building can be seen in the north and east fronts, between which is the remodelled two-storey entrance front.


Fiddleford Manor (also known as Fiddleford Mill)  is a medieval manor house located near Sturminster Newton, Dorset. It is thought to have been originally built around 1370 for William Latimer, the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset, after the manor passed to him in 1355. The house is now owned by English Heritage and open for the public to visit throughout the year; however, there is an adjoining building to the north that continues to serve as a private residence and is not open to the public.
The present day site—set in a T-shape—comprises a two-storey solar and half of the hall to the east of that, both with open timber roofs; the foundations of the west range and an extension of the hall are now visible only as earthworks. The house is unusual among its class of building in retaining many of its original features; this despite having undergone many alterations during its 600-year history. It has been described as having "perhaps the most spectacular manor house interior in Dorset." In the sixteenth century the solar wing was extended to the north and the hall remodeled by architect Thomas White and his wife Anne; the house remained in the White family until at least the time of Charles I. After the Restoration, it was bought by Sir Thomas Freke and retained by his descendants, the Pitt-Rivers family; they reduced the length of the hall by 2 metres (6.6 ft), it having previously extended almost to the River Stour, and added a new fireplace and ceiling. By 1956, however, the 18th-century building had been demolished and the original, 14th-century part was derelict; by 1962, only the northern wing remained habitable, and the original section passed into state ownership. The house underwent restoration during the 1970s by the Department for the Environment—now the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).


Aydon Castle, previously sometimes called Aydon Hall, is a fortified manor house at Aydon near to the town of Corbridge, Northumberland, England. It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and is designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building.


Aydon Hall's use as a farmhouse ended in 1966 when the property was opened to the public as a historic site. The site has been owned and operated by English Heritage in recent years, and is listed as a Grade I listed building. The location is popular for tourists and locals, and is considered to be an excellent example of a fortified manor house.


251 Menlove Avenue is the childhood home of the Beatles' John Lennon. Located in the Woolton suburb of Liverpool, it is nicknamed Mendips after the Mendip Hills. The Grade II listed building is preserved by the National Trust.


The 1933-built semi-detached property, which belonged to John Lennon's aunt Mimi and her husband George Smith, is in Woolton, south Liverpool. Lennon moved there in July 1946 at the age of five from 9 Newcastle Road in the nearby suburb of Wavertree. He lived at Mendips after his mother, who was living with her boyfriend, was persuaded that it would be better for his Aunt Mimi and George to take care of him. He remained at Mendips until mid-1963, when he was 22 years old. It was approximately 30 metres north west of this house that Lennon's mother Julia was hit by a car and killed on the evening of 15 July 1958.
In 1965 Mimi sold the property, taking away some of the furnishings and giving away others.


Despite having purchased 20 Forthlin Road, the childhood residence of Paul McCartney, the National Trust showed no interest in acquiring the property on Menlove Avenue, claiming that, unlike McCartney's home, no Beatles songs had been composed at Mendips. However, McCartney recalls at least one song, "I'll Get You", being written there. "Please Please Me" was also written there.
During the filming of the American TV film In His Life: The John Lennon Story in 2000, the then-owner of the house allowed the film crew inside, and also allowed them to knock down a downstairs wall to make room for the cameras. This resulted in 150 bricks being removed, which later were sold to Beatles fans.
On 7 December 2000, the day before the 20th anniversary of John Lennon's death, 251 Menlove Avenue was adorned with an English Heritage blue plaque, carrying the text "JOHN LENNON 1940–1980 Musician and Songwriter lived here 1945–1963".
Lennon's widow Yoko Ono bought the house in March 2002, and donated it to the National Trust in order to save it from further demolition and property speculators. The house was then restored to its 1950s appearance. At a joint press conference with the National Trust in March 2003, when it was announced that the restoration work was finished and the house would be opened to the public, Yoko Ono said: "When John's house came up for sale I wanted to preserve it for the people of Liverpool and John Lennon and Beatles fans all over the world."
In February 2012, both this house and Paul McCartney's childhood home at 20 Forthlin Road were Grade II listed by English Heritage.


Dudmaston Hall is a 17th-century country house in the care of the National Trust in the Severn Valley, Shropshire, England.
Dudmaston Hall is located near the village of Quatt, a few miles south of the market town of Bridgnorth, just off the A442 road.


The property is a late 17th-century country mansion and an example of a traditional Shropshire country estate, in that it comprises the main hall, the landscaped gardens, parkland, managed woodlands, lakeside, farmland and the estate cottages, for example at Quatt, a model village designed by London architect John Birch in 1870 for the workers and tenants of the estate.


The Dudmaston estate has been in the Wolryche family or the barely related Wolryche-Whitmore family since 1403, when William Wolryche of nearby Much Wenlock acquired it by marriage to the heiress of the former owners, Margaret de Dudmaston. It is likely that the medieval house was replaced by a structure on the site of the present building in the 16th century. This is shown in a stylised way on old maps as a fortified manor house. It is likely that the main source of income was sheep raising, an important part of the late medieval economy, in which the wool trade played a central role. Unlike many of the Shropshire and Staffordshire gentry, the Wolryches accepted the Reformation and became stalwart Anglicans, but were royalists, as loyal to the House of Stuart as to their Tudor predecessors.
Francis Wolryche (1563–1614) was wealthy enough to have himself and his wife, Margaret Bromley, buried under elaborate effigies in Quatt church. Their son, Sir Thomas Wolryche, 1st Baronet (1598–1668), was the first of the Wolryche baronets – a dignity he achieved not by the usual route of purchase, but through his enthusiastic support for Charles I, who knighted him July 1641 and raised him to the baronetcy a few weeks later. On the outbreak of the English Civil War, he raised troops for the king and was appointed governor of Bridgnorth Castle. When Parliamentary forces arrived at Bridgnorth in 1646, Wolryche's garrison set fire to the town, which was largely destroyed, before retreating into the castle, only to surrender shortly afterwards. Sir Thomas Wolryche was fined £730 14s by Parliament and was one of the few royalists not to recover his money at the Restoration in 1660.


Lindisfarne Castle is a 16th-century castle located on Holy Island, near Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, England, much altered by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1901. The island is accessible from the mainland at low tide by means of a causeway.


The entrance to the castle is quite dramatic and involves a steep climb around the rocky base. Lutyens's original slope was unprotected by either rails or fences in an attempt to emphasise the exposed nature of the site. When the future George V and Queen Mary visited in 1908, it is said they were alarmed by the slope and the cobbled surface.
Once inside the castle, the entrance hall is sectioned off by large stone pillars, somewhat reminiscent of a church nave with the dark reddish-brown of the stone contrasting with the whitewashed plasterwork. The space is completed by a bare stone floor.
The kitchen is almost as bare, and is dominated by a large stone fireplace. Here, as at Castle Drogo, Lutyens uses the space in interesting ways. Throughout the castle, he has used stone, brick, slate and wood to create simple forms, and uses textures to demonstrate a rustic, spartan life-style. Despite being a castle it remains a homely space where the human scale is room size, but with incongruous architectural elements. In the scullery there is a tiny window over a stone sink surrounded by the mechanism used to operate the portcullis.
After descending to the dining room one is inside the remnants of the Tudor fort. The vaults here and in the adjacent ship room are entirely functional as they support the gun battery above. The wide chimney-piece contains an old bread-oven; here Lutyens has emphasised the age of the room with Neo-Gothic traceried windows framed by curtains which swing out to lie flat along the wall. One of the end walls is painted a rich Prussian blue, which contrasts with the herring-bone patterned red-brick floor.
Next door is the ship room where a green wall fulfils a similar role. The furniture is in keeping, with much dark wood in the tables and cabinets. The few upholstered chairs and sofas have now faded to gentle tones.
The largest bedroom, the east, is bright and airy and again has curtains on pull-out poles. The long gallery was a new space created by Lutyens, intended to echo the grand galleries of Elizabethan and Jacobean houses. The scale is much smaller, but again the use of exposed stone arches and oak beams provides a grand yet rustic feel.
Further on, an upper gallery has a raised platform at one end. From here an oak door leads onto the upper battery with its views along the coastline. The music room at the castle was used by Guilhermina Suggia, and a cello is left in the room today to mark her frequent visits.


The castle is located in what was once the very volatile border area between England and Scotland. Not only did the English and Scots fight, but the area was frequently attacked by Vikings. Lindisfarne's position in the North Sea made it vulnerable to attack from Scots and Norsemen.
Lindisfarne Priory was abandoned between 1536 and 1537 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. A small fort was built near the priory around 1550, taking advantage of the island's strategic location. During the construction work, the priory buildings were used as a source of building stone. The castle was built on the highest point of the island, a whinstone hill called Beblowe Crag, between 1570 and 1572.
After Henry VIII suppressed the priory, his troops used the remains as a naval store. In 1542 Henry VIII ordered the Earl of Rutland to fortify the site against possible Scottish invasion. By December 1547, Ralph Cleisbye, Captain of the fort, had guns that included a wheel-mounted demi-culverin, two brass sakers, a falcon, and another fixed demi-culverin. However, Beblowe Crag itself was not fortified until 1549 and Sir Richard Lee saw only a decayed platform and turf rampart there in 1565. Elizabeth I then had work carried out on the fort, strengthening it and providing gun platforms for the new developments in artillery technology. These works in 1570 and 1571 cost £1191. When James I came to power in England, he combined the Scottish and English thrones, and the need for the castle declined. At this time the castle was still garrisoned from Berwick and protected the small Lindisfarne Harbour.
In the eighteenth century, the castle was occupied briefly by Jacobite rebels, but was quickly recaptured by soldiers from Berwick who imprisoned the rebels; they dug their way out and hid for nine days close to nearby Bamburgh Castle before making good their escape.
In later years the castle was used as a coastguard look-out and became something of a tourist attraction. Charles Rennie Mackintosh made a sketch of the old fort in 1901.
In 1901, it became the property of Edward Hudson, a publishing magnate and the owner of Country Life magazine. He had it refurbished in the Arts and Crafts style by Sir Edwin Lutyens. It is said that Hudson and the architect came across the building while touring Northumberland and climbed over the wall to explore inside.
The walled garden, which had originally been the garrison's vegetable plot, was designed by Lutyens' long-time friend and collaborator, Gertrude Jekyll between 1906 and 1912. It is some distance away from the castle itself. Between 2002 and 2006 it was restored to Jekyll's original planting plan which is now held in the Reef Collection at the University of California, Berkeley. The castle, garden and nearby lime kilns have been in the care of the National Trust since 1944 and are open to visitors.
Lutyens used upturned disused boats (herring busses) as sheds. In 2005, two of the boats were destroyed by arson. They were replaced in 2006 and the third boat has now been renovated by the National Trust. The replacement of the two burned boats by two new boat sheds features on a DVD Diary of an Island. This shows a fishing boat from Leith being cut in half in a boatyard in Eyemouth and the two "sheds" being transported to the island and lifted into place by crane.
The Spanish architect Enric Miralles used Lutyens' upturned herring busses as an inspiration for his design of the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh.
The castle was closed for major renovation and restoration works from November 2016 to April 2018.


The Charles Dickens Museum is an author's house museum at 48 Doughty Street in King's Cross, in the London Borough of Camden. It occupies a typical Georgian terraced house which was Charles Dickens's home from 25 March 1837 (a year after his marriage) to December 1839.


Doddington Hall is, from the outside, an Elizabethan prodigy house or mansion complete with walled courtyards and a gabled gatehouse. Inside it was largely updated in the 1760s. It is located in the village of Doddington, to the west of the city of Lincoln in Lincolnshire, England.


Doddington Hall was built between 1593 and 1600 by Robert Smythson for Thomas Tailor, who was a lawyer, the Recorder to the Bishop of Lincoln. It is a grade I listed building. The facade is wide, but the house is only a single room deep at the centre.  In the 12th century the manor of Doddington was owned by the Pigot family who sold it to Sir Thomas Burgh in 1450, and eventually to John Savile of Howley Hall in Leeds. In 1593, he sold the manor house to Thomas Tailor who commissioned the present house. It was inherited by his son, and then his granddaughter Elizabeth Anton who married Sir Edward Hussey of Honington in Lincolnshire. Their son Sir Thomas Hussey inherited in 1658. Sir Thomas's three daughters were his co-heiresses when he died in 1706. Mrs Sarah Apreece was the surviving heiress and on her death in 1749, her daughter Rhoda, wife of Captain Francis Blake Delaval (the elder) of Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland, inherited. It then passed to her second son, Sir John Hussey-Delaval, and he had improvements made to the Hall in 1761 by Thomas and William Lumby of Lincoln. John's younger brother Edward Delaval inherited in 1808, and his daughter, Mrs Sarah Gunman, who inherited on her father's death in 1814, left the Hall to Lieutenant Colonel George Jarvis in 1829. On his death it passed to his cousin the Rev Robert Eden Cole, and it remains in private ownership today. In the mid 20th century the Hall was restored by Laurence Bond and Francis Johnson.
The Hall's contents, including textiles, ceramics, porcelain, furniture and pictures, reflect 400 years of unbroken family occupation. It is surrounded by 6 acres (24,000 m²) of walled and wild gardens with flowering from early spring until autumn.
The Hall and Gardens are open to the public, with facilities for private tours and school visits. A temple designed by Anthony Jarvis in 1973 stands in the gardens. Summer concerts and occasional exhibitions are held in the Long Gallery. Other businesses have been developed on the estate such as the sale of Christmas trees, weddings, a Cycle shop with cafe and a farm shop selling local produce.
The parkland and gardens of Doddington Hall are listed Grade II* on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.


Burton Agnes Hall is an Elizabethan manor house in the village of Burton Agnes, near Driffield in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was built by Sir Henry Griffith in 1601–10 to designs attributed to Robert Smythson. The older Norman Burton Agnes Manor House, originally built in 1173, still stands on an adjacent site; both buildings are now Grade I listed buildings.


The estate has been in the hands of the same family since Roger de Stuteville first built a manor house on the site in 1173. In 1457 Sir Walter Griffith came to live there. The Griffiths were a Welsh family who had emigrated to Staffordshire in the thirteenth century and inherited the Burton Agnes estate.
The present Elizabethan house was built nearby in 1601–10 by Sir Henry Griffith, 1st Baronet, after he was appointed to the Council of the North. His daughter Frances Griffith, heiress of the estate, married Sir Matthew Boynton, Governor of Scarborough Castle and the first Boynton baronet. On her death in 1634 the estate was bequeathed to their son Francis, later the second Baronet Boynton. According to legend, the skull of Sir Henry's youngest daughter Anne is bricked up in the Great Hall. It is reputed to be a screaming skull, and to return to the house whenever it is removed.
The widow of the 6th Baronet married John Parkhurst of Catesby Priory, Northamptonshire, known as "Handsome Jack", who squandered much of the family fortune and neglected the estate.
On the death of the eleventh Baronet in 1899 the house passed to his daughter, who had married Thomas Lamplugh Wickham, and who had adopted the additional surname of Boynton. On her death it passed in turn to their son Marcus Wickham Boynton, who operated a successful stud farm on the estate for many years and was High Sheriff of Yorkshire for 1953–54. He died in 1989 and left the property to a distant cousin, Simon Cunliffe-Lister, then aged twelve, grandson of Viscount Whitelaw and son of the 3rd Earl of Swinton. Today, the estate is owned by the Burton Agnes Preservation Trust and is managed by Cunliffe-Lister and his mother, the Hon. Dame Susan Cunliffe Lister DCVO.
A Hall Class railway engine was named Burton Agnes Hall, and is preserved at Didcot Railway Centre.


Sezincote House (pronounced seas in coat) is the centre of a country estate in the civil parish of Sezincote, in the county of Gloucestershire, England. The house was designed by Samuel Pepys Cockerell, built in 1805, and is a notable example of Neo-Mughal architecture, a 19th-century reinterpretation of 16th and 17th-century architecture from the Mughal Empire. At the time of its construction, British India was becoming the "jewel in the crown" of the world's largest empire. According to Shashi Tharoor, the palace is an 'incongruous monument to the opulence of the nabobs' loot', referring to the construction of the palace using the wealth acquired by the East India Company's loot and plunder in Bengal.
Sezincote is dominated by its red sandstone colour, typical in Mughal architecture, but features a copper-covered dome instead of the typical white marble. The fenestration is composed of a sequence of extra-large windows with an arch-shape at the top. The arch, however, is not a simple or typical design, but instead a shell-like fan that is evidence of the Mughal influence. The interior design is more typical European style.
The landscape was designed by Humphry Repton. It is essentially a renaissance-style garden with elements of Hindu style, as seen in the crescent bridge with columns.


The house is in countryside 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) from Moreton-in-Marsh, "set on high ground in the shelter of the Cotswolds". Colonel John Cockerell bought the estate in 1795 on his return from Bengal where he had been in the service of the East India Company (EIC). After his death in 1798, his youngest brother, Sir Charles Cockerell, inherited the property who then "employed another brother, Samuel Pepys Cockerell, to build him a house in the Indian manner."
Samuel Pepys Cockerell had worked as a surveyor for the EIC and as an apprentice to Sir Robert Taylor, where John Nash was also apprenticed. In spite of his tenure as Surveyor to the East India Company, Cockerell never travelled to India; his encounters with Mughal architecture, a building style that flourished in India in the 16th century, were strictly through the medium of drawings and engravings, such as those by Thomas Daniell (who designed the garden for his "old Indian ally" Sir Charles Cockerell and its temple, bridge, dairy and farm buildings) and his nephews.
Cockerell had already experimented cautiously with Indian elements at Daylesford, Gloucestershire, built for Warren Hastings, first governor-general of British India, nearby. Here the style is characterized by a striking revival of Islamic architecture in northern India, where Persian, Indian and various provincial styles were fused to produce works of great refinement. Favoured materials included white marble and red sandstone. A notable example is the Taj Mahal, completed in 1648 by the Emperor Shah Jahan.


Kelmscott Manor is a limestone manor house in the Cotswolds village of Kelmscott, in West Oxfordshire, southern England. It dates from around 1570, with a late 17th-century wing, and is listed Grade I on the National Heritage List for England. It is situated close to the River Thames. The nearest town is Lechlade-On-Thames.


The manor was in a precarious state of decay when passed to The Society and much of the 1960's work was to make sure that the manor house did not deteriorate further. Most of the main roof beams were rotten which meant that a lot of the structure needed to be replaced. Internal walls and floors were strengthened and a new porch added to the North entrance. The associated barns were purchased by the Society in the 1970's and converted into a shop and tearoom.
The internal décor today is substantially that of Morris, and includes many of his famous textile patterns as well as much of his furniture. Visitors can explore all three floors of the manor, including the attic spaces which would originally have been used for farm labourers. Morris's bedroom contains many of his original books, and a collection of Dürer prints. Other rooms display furniture from Red House in Bexleyheath, Kelmscott House in Hammersmith and other family homes. There are also further works by Rossetti, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and Pieter Brueghel the Younger.
The manor was reopened in April 2022 after a major restoration project undertaken by the Society. The work, funded by grants totalling £6m from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Kelmscott: Past Present and Future campaign, has seen extensive work undertaken to the structure of the house, as well as renovation of the interior. The manor is a Grade I listed building.


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The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site, previously known as the Benjamin Harrison Home, is the former home of the twenty-third president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison. It is in the Old Northside Historic District of Indianapolis, Indiana. Harrison's 16-room house was built from 1874 to 1875. It was from the front porch of the house that Harrison instituted his famous Front Porch Campaign in the 1888 United States presidential campaign, often speaking to crowds on the street. In 1896, Harrison renovated the house and added electricity. He died there in a second-story bedroom in 1901. Today it is owned by the Arthur Jordan Foundation and operated as a museum to the former president by the Benjamin Harrison Foundation.


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The Italianate Benjamin Harrison House was built at 1230 Delaware Street from 1874 to 1875, using the plans of architect Herman T. Brandt. The red brick house has sixteen rooms. The bracketed cornices and three-story bay window are indicative of the Italianate architecture style. Interior features include an oak-trimmed walnut staircase, butternut woodwork, and parquet floors. Many renovations took place in 1896, which included electricity and the front porch.


Rufford Old Hall is a National Trust property in Rufford, Lancashire, England. Built in about 1530 for Sir Robert Hesketh, only the Great Hall survives from the original structure. A brick-built wing in the Jacobean style was added in 1661, at right angles to the Great Hall, and a third wing was added in the 1820s.
Rufford Old Hall is designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building, The hall's cottage, coach house and stables, about ten metres (33 ft) to the east, are designated Grade II.


The origins of the house date from circa 1340–1360. The earliest recorded owner is Sir Thomas Cawne, who was resident towards the middle of the 14th century. The house passed by the marriage of his daughter Alice to Nicholas Haute and their descendants, their grandson Richard Haute being Sheriff of Kent in the late 15th century. It was then purchased in 1521 by the courtier Sir Richard Clement (d.1538). In 1591, Sir William Selby bought the estate.


Historic Strawberry Mansion is a summer home in East Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was originally named Summerville by Judge William Lewis who had it built sometime between 1783 and 1789.


Sudbury Hall is a country house in Sudbury, Derbyshire, England. One of the country's finest Restoration mansions, it has Grade I listed building status.
The National Trust Museum of Childhood is housed in the 19th-century servants' wing of Sudbury Hall.


The Vernon family came to Sudbury as a result of the 16th-century marriage of Sir John Vernon to Ellen Montgomery the Sudbury heiress. The house was built between 1660 and 1680 by George Vernon, grandfather of George Venables-Vernon the 1st Baron Vernon and is notable for its superb Great Staircase, fine Long Gallery, and portraits by John Michael Wright, and of Charles II's mistresses. Inside there is a mixture of architectural styles with carvings by Grinling Gibbons and Edward Pierce (who created the fine staircase), murals by Louis Laguerre and elaborate plasterwork by Samuel Mansfield, James Pettifer and Robert Bradbury. The carvings above the main entrance porch were sculpted by William Wilson. There are formal gardens with a tree-fringed lake.
Cherry Ann Knott has suggested that the design of the hall was based on Crewe Hall in Cheshire, which stands around 1.5 miles from Haslington Hall, where George Vernon was born.
The property was leased for three years from 1840 by Queen Adelaide, the widow of William IV of the United Kingdom. The east wing was added by George Devey in 1876–83. The building is now owned and maintained by the National Trust. to whom it was gifted by the Vernon family in 1967.
The house was used for the internal Pemberley scenes in the BBC dramatisation (1995) of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The house's centrally-positioned domed cap-house featured in the title shot of Yorkshire Television's children's programme The Book Tower.


Forde Abbey is a privately owned former Cistercian monastery in Dorset, England, with a postal address in Chard, Somerset. The house and gardens are run as a tourist attraction while the 1,600-acre (650 ha) estate is farmed to provide additional revenue. Forde Abbey is a Grade I listed building.


Between 1133 and 1136, wealthy nobleman Richard de Brioniis built a priory on his land at Brightley (meaning "bright" or "clear" pasture) and invited Gilbert, Abbot of Waverley in Surrey, to send 12 monks to form a new Cistercian community there. One story is that the agricultural land surrounding the new priory was insufficiently fertile, forcing the monks to consider returning to the mother house in 1141. However, Adelicia de Brioniis, the sister of Richard and successor to his estate, offered them an alternative site close to the River Axe in the manor of Thorncombe. Here, between 1141 and 1148, they built a new priory which came to be known as "Ford" due to its proximity to an old river crossing. The monastery was dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
John of Ford (c. 1140 – 21 April 1214) was the prior of Forde Abbey, then from 1186 abbot of its daughter house of Bindon, and between 1191 and 1214 the abbot of Forde. He was a friend and ally of King John during the papal interdict, receiving remuneration from the king. The foundation grew and became very wealthy, eventually possessing lands over 30,000 acres (120 km²) by the 14th century. Sometime in the 13th Century, the body of St. Wulfric of Haselbury was buried in the western transept of the abbey's church, after an attempt by Benedictine monks from Montacute Priory to steal the body of the saint. The third abbot, Abbot Baldwin, became Archbishop of Canterbury. Abbot Chard, the last abbot of Forde at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, surrendered the abbey to the Crown peacefully in 1539. The abbey buildings and lands were leased in 1540 to Richard Pollard (1505-1542), second son of Sir Lewis Pollard (c.1465-1526) of King's Nympton, Devon, Justice of the Common Pleas from 1514 to 1526 Richard Pollard was later knighted and his son sold Forde Abbey to his relative, Sir Amias Poulet of Hinton St George, Somerset. Sir Amias and his father before him had acted as Steward of the Abbey and its property while it was a monastery. In 1580–81, Sir Amias Poulet was licensed to alienate lands belonging to that abbey to William Rosewell, the 20-year-old son of William Rosewell, Solicitor-General. Forde Abbey probably changed hands about the same time. William Rosewell of Forde died in 1593 and Forde Abbey was left to his wife Anne. Their son Henry probably took ownership on maturity in 1611. Henry became Sir Henry Rosewell of Forde in 1619. Forde Abbey was held for nearly seventy years by the Rosewells until it was sold in 1649 to Edmund Prideaux (died 1659), Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis and Treasurer of the Inner Temple, London. He supported the Parliamentary cause during the English Civil War and was the attorney-general for most of the Interregnum. He made a fortune practising law and running the Parliamentary postal service. Having purchased the property he converted the buildings into his private home,  with several classicising features, including the small loggia.
The house remained largely unchanged during the 18th century, though the gardens were created during this period. In 1815, the house was rented to the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. During the 19th century the house had a succession of owners, some of whom neglected the house while others attempted to renovate it. In 1905, the cousin of the last owner inherited the house and moved in with her husband Freeman Roper, whose descendants still own and occupy the house and estates.


Highcliffe Castle, situated on the cliffs at Highcliffe, Dorset, was built between 1831 and 1835 by Charles Stuart, 1st Baron Stuart de Rothesay in a Gothic Revival style near the site of High Cliff House, a Georgian Mansion designed for the 3rd Earl of Bute  (a founder of Kew Gardens) with the gardens laid out by Capability Brown. The design, by William Donthorne, a founder member of RIBA, incorporated large quantities of carved Medieval stonework salvaged from the ruined Benedictine Abbey of St Peter at Jumieges and the Grand' Maison des Andelys, both situated in Normandy, France.


Highcliffe Castle is a Grade I listed building now owned by Christchurch Council, and described as "the most important remaining example of the Romantic and Picturesque style of architecture.” It holds events, is open to the general public throughout the year and can be used for weddings and other private events.
In 2008, Dorset construction company Greendale Construction Limited carried out major refurbishment works as part of the sixth phase of a substantial repair, renovation and development programme for the castle. This was the first significant change made to the building in the last decade. As a result of the restoration work, an estimated 55,000 visitors will now be able to access parts of Highcliffe Castle that were previously not open to the public, including the state dining room, butler’s pantry and the East Tower. The project also completed improvements to the Great Hall, food preparation area and bar, as well as constructing new public toilets in the basement and upgrading the external car park.
Following the success of Phase 6, in 2018 Greendale Construction Limited carried out yet another major 18-month renovation and restoration of Highcliffe Castle’s Penleaze Wing. This more recent work has opened up parts of the castle previously impassable for over 50 years, since devastating fires and vandalism of the 1970s that destroyed and cut off parts of the building. The works have also seen the extension of upper level stairs with timber and the formation of 2 new lift shafts and 5 new or restored stairs. A mezzanine level walkway has been completed, and new steel stairs extending to the first and second floor.


Powderham Castle is a fortified manor house situated within the parish and former manor of Powderham, within the former hundred of Exminster, Devon, about 6 miles (9.7 km) south of the city of Exeter and 1⁄4 mile (0.4 km) north-east of the village of Kenton, where the main public entrance gates are located. It is a Grade I listed building. The park and gardens are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
It is situated on flat, formerly marshy ground on the west bank of the River Exe estuary where it is joined by its tributary the River Kenn. On the opposite side of the Exe is the small village of Lympstone. Starting with a structure built sometime after 1390, the present castle was expanded and altered extensively in the 18th and 19th centuries. The castle remains the seat of the Courtenay family, Earls of Devon.


Torre Abbey is a historic building and art gallery in Torquay, Devon, which lies in the South West of England. It was founded in 1196 as a monastery for Premonstratensian canons, and is now the best-preserved medieval monastery in Devon and Cornwall. In addition to its medieval and Georgian rooms, Torre Abbey is known for the formal gardens on Abbey Park and Meadows, for the third largest art collection in the county of Devon and for regular exhibitions by contemporary artists.


In 1196 six Premonstratensian canons from the Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire founded Torre Abbey when William Brewer, lord of the manor of Torre, gave them land. By 1536 the Abbey's annual income made it the wealthiest of all the Premonstratensian houses in England. The canons surrendered to King Henry's VIII's commissioner in 1539 at the Dissolution of the Monasteries and immediately thereafter in 1539 a 21-year lease of the site and demesne of Torre Abbey was acquired by Sir Hugh I Pollard (fl.1535,1545), lord of the manor of King's Nympton, Sheriff of Devon in 1535/6 and Recorder of Barnstaple in 1545. In 1543 Pollard acquired the freehold from John St. Leger (d.1596) of Annery, who had himself acquired it in 1543 with other lands from the king in exchange for some lands and payment of a cash balance.
Dissolution resulted in a widescale demolition of the church and east range, and all items of value, including the lead from the roofs, were taken. The south and west ranges were mostly unscathed and, in 1598, were converted into a house for Thomas Ridgeway. After a succession of various owners, the house became the possession of the Cary family in 1662. The house continued in the possession of the Cary family until 1930 when the mansion and grounds were sold by Commander Henry Cary to the Torquay Borough Council, although the family continued to own the surrounding estate and the (notional) lordship of the manor of Tor Mohun. Monuments to various members of the Cary family survive in St Saviour's Church. The building has since been used as a municipal art gallery; the mayor's parlour and, during World War II, it was used by the Royal Air Force. Torre Abbey is owned and managed by Torbay Council. After a £6.5 million refurbishment made possible by grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage and the Friends of Torre Abbey, Torre Abbey reopened in July 2008.


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The Weald and Downland Living Museum (formerly known as the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum until January 2017) is an open-air museum in Singleton, West Sussex. The museum is a registered charity.
The museum covers 40 acres (16 ha), with over 50 historic buildings dating from 950AD to the 19th century, along with gardens, farm animals, walks and a mill pond.
The principal aim at the foundation of the museum was to establish a centre that could rescue representative examples of vernacular buildings from South East England, and thereby to generate increased public awareness and interest in the built environment.
The museum principally promotes the retention of buildings on their original sites unless there is no alternative, and encourages an informed and sympathetic approach to their preservation and continuing use.
The buildings at the museum were all threatened with destruction and, as it was not possible to find a way to preserve them at their original sites, they were carefully dismantled, conserved and rebuilt in their historical form at the museum.
These buildings, plus two archaeological reconstructions, help the museum bring to life the homes, farmsteads and rural industries of the last 950 years. Along with the buildings, there are "hands-on" activities, like cooking, and weaving, and a number of yearly activities, including seasonal shows, historic gardens weekend and Tree Dressing.


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The Weald and Downland Gridshell was constructed in 2000–2002. An innovative design built primarily to create an accessible store for the museum's rural life collection, it also houses the museum's conservation workshops, and an exhibition area is in the foyer. The building has won eight awards, and was runner-up for the RIBA 2003 Stirling Prize.


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Poplar cottage is a small timber-framed, thatched building dating from the 17th century. It was originally built at Washington, Sussex. The building dates from between 1550 and 1630. It was donated to the museum in 1982 and carefully dismantled in that year. It was re-erected in 1999, the work being funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Rebuilding
Work on re-erecting the building began on 10 April 1999, the timbers having been prepared over the previous winter. The outside wall of the smoke bay was infilled with sandstone, whilst the rest of the building was infilled with wattle and daub. The roof was thatched.


Handel & Hendrix in London (previously Handel House Museum) is a museum in Mayfair, London, dedicated to the lives and works of the German-born British baroque composer George Frideric Handel and the American rock singer-guitarist Jimi Hendrix, who lived at 25 and 23 Brook Street respectively.
Handel made his home in London in 1712 and eventually became a British citizen in 1727. Handel was the first occupant of 25 Brook Street, which he rented from 1723 until his death there in 1759.  Almost all his works after 1723, amongst them many of his best-known operas, oratorios and ceremonial music, were composed and partially rehearsed in the house, which contained a variety of keyboard instruments, including harpsichords, a clavichord and a small chamber organ.
The museum was opened in 2001 by the Handel House Trust as the result of an initiative of the musicologist and Handelian Stanley Sadie in 1959. It comprises a carefully restored set of period rooms on the first and second floors of 25 Brook Street together with exhibition rooms in number 23, the adjacent house on the terrace. In 2016 the museum expanded to incorporate the upper floors of 23 Brook Street, home of Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s.


The original idea for establishing a museum at 25 Brook Street to commemorate its original and most notable occupant first occurred to the musicologist Stanley Sadie in 1959, at a party held there by the fashion company Viyella to commemorate the bicentenary of Handel's death. After a further 30 years, in the early 1990s Sadie and his wife Julie Anne set up the Handel House Trust, the charity which oversaw the conversion of the house into a museum.
The house has been restored to look as it did during Handel's 36 year occupancy from 1723 to 1759. A typical early 18th century London terrace house, it comprises a basement, three main storeys and an attic, and Handel was the first occupant. The attic was later converted into a fourth full floor. The ground floor is a shop not associated with the Museum, and the upper floors are leased to a charity called the Handel House Trust, and have been open to the public since 8 November 2001.
The interiors have been restored to the somewhat spartan style of the Georgian era, using mostly architectural elements from elsewhere, since, apart from the staircase, few of the original interior features survived.
The Handel House Collection Trust has assembled a collection of Handel memorabilia, including the Byrne Collection of several hundred items, which was acquired in 1998.


Bignor Roman Villa is a large Roman courtyard villa which has been excavated and put on public display on the Bignor estate in the English county of West Sussex. It is well known for its high quality mosaic floors, which are some of the most complete and intricate in the country.


George Tupper, a farmer, discovered the villa in 1811 when his plough hit a large stone. It was almost entirely excavated by John Hawkins who lived at nearby Bignor Park, and the antiquary, Samuel Lysons. Opened to the public in 1814, it rapidly became a tourist attraction, with nearly a thousand entries in the visitors' book in the first nine months.
By 1815 the remains of a substantial villa had been uncovered and protective buildings had been erected over several of the mosaics. In 1818 Samuel Lysons read his third and final paper on the villa to the Society of Antiquaries. He had already published a series of engravings of the villa with the help of Richard Smirke and Charles Stothard. These engravings together with his three papers and his and his brother's correspondence with Hawkins form the only record of the original excavations. Excavations ceased in 1819 after Samuel Lysons' death.
No further work was undertaken on the site until 1925 when S. E. Winbolt did some minor work. Between 1956 and 1962 Sheppard Frere re-excavated parts of the villa in the first attempt to determine its chronology. Since then Thomas Tupper, the direct descendant of the discoverer, whose family still owns the site, has undertaken further excavations: with Margaret Rule in the 1970s, and David Rudling in the 1980s.


Berrington Hall is a country house located about 3 miles (5 km) north of Leominster, Herefordshire, England. During the 20th century it was the seat of the Cawley family.
It is a neoclassical country house building that Henry Holland designed in 1778-81 for Thomas Harley. It has a somewhat austere exterior, but the interiors are subtle and delicate. Berrington Hall is home to the Elmar Digby furniture collection, paintings by, among others, Thomas Luny (1759–1837), and the Charles Paget Wade costume collection from Snowshill, which can be viewed by appointment. The 'below stairs' areas and servants' quarters that are open to the public include a Victorian laundry and Georgian dairy. Berrington has been in the care of the National Trust since 1957 and is, along with its gardens, open to the public.
Berrington features Capability Brown's last landscape design. A notable feature is the ha-ha wall, which was subject to extensive renovation in the late 20th century by local craftsmen. Berrington Pool, a lake and island, is a Site of Special Scientific Interest.


Berrington had been in the possession of the Cornewall family since 1386, but was sold in 1775 to Thomas Harley, a banker and government contractor who in 1767 had been Lord Mayor of London. He commissioned the rebuilding in 1778-1781 of the present Berrington Hall in place of the previous old house. He made it available to his daughter Anne and her new husband George Rodney, the son of Admiral Rodney. After Harley's death the house descended in the Rodney family for 95 years.
In 1901 the Manchester businessman Frederick Cawley MP, later Baron Cawley, purchased the estate from George Brydges Harley Dennett Rodney, 7th Baron Rodney. In 1957 the 3rd Lord Cawley transferred it to the Treasury, which passed it on to the National Trust. Lady Cawley was allowed to remain in occupation until her death in 1978.
It was classified as a Grade I listed building in 1959.


Belsay Hall is a Regency style country house located at Belsay, Northumberland. It is regarded as the first British country house to be built entirely in the new Greek revival style. It is a Grade I listed building. It was built to supersede Belsay Castle and its adjoining earlier hall just a few hundred yards away, and is part of the same estate.


The house was built between 1810 and 1817 for Sir Charles Monck (then of Belsay Castle close by) to his own design, possibly assisted by architect John Dobson.  It is built in ashlar with a Lakeland slate roof in the Greek Doric style.
The house measures 100 feet (30 m) square, with a lower kitchen wing attached to the north side. Externally the house appears to have two stories, although there is an additional storey hidden within the roof space to provide servant accommodation.
This service side of the house was badly affected by dry rot in the 1970s and, following remedial work, it has been left as a weather-proof shell to illustrate how the house was built. The hall was the residence of the Middleton family until 1962.


The entire Belsay Hall house is unfurnished and maintained in a condition of benign decay, with only necessary structural maintenance undertaken. This allows it to be used as a setting for bespoke art installations each summer.
There are extensive gardens, formal and naturalistic, such as the linear Quarry Garden. There is wheelchair access to the Quarry Garden, the ground floor of both the Hall and the Castle, and to the café.  The gardens are also Grade I listed on the Historic England Park and Garden Register.
Belsay Hall is administered by English Heritage and is open to the public.


Soho House is a museum run by Birmingham Museums Trust, celebrating Matthew Boulton's life, his partnership with James Watt, his membership of the Lunar Society of Birmingham and his contribution to the Midlands Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It is a Grade II* listed 18th-century house in Handsworth, part of Birmingham since 1911, but historically in the county of Staffordshire. It was the home of entrepreneur Matthew Boulton from 1766 until his death in 1809, and a regular meeting-place of the Lunar Society.


Matthew Boulton, one of the 18th century's most significant entrepreneurs, acquired the lease of the five-year-old Soho Mill in 1761 and developed it into Soho Manufactory. He expanded the cottage next to it into Soho House, changing it several times. It is faced with sheets of painted slate to give the appearance of large stone blocks. Boulton moved into Soho House when the Manufactory was completed. The Soho Manufactory was demolished in 1863.
In 1766, Boulton became one of the founders of the Lunar Society. In 1789, Boulton commissioned Samuel Wyatt to extend the buildings and fully revamp it and the gardens. Work on extending the building was completed in 1796 following the submission of designs by James Wyatt, Samuel's brother, for the additions of a main entrance front. Wyatt was also responsible for the large dining room, the regular venue for meetings of the Lunar Society. It is a Grade II* listed building.
After Boulton's death, in the house, it passed to his son Matthew Robinson Boulton and later his grandson, Matthew Piers Watt Boulton, who eventually sold it in 1850. It then had a number of owners, and was at one time used as a residential hostel for police officers, before being acquired  by Birmingham City Council in 1990 and being opened by them as a museum in 1995.


Lincoln Castle is a major medieval castle constructed in Lincoln, England, during the late 11th century by William the Conqueror on the site of a pre-existing Roman fortress. The castle is unusual in that it has two mottes. It is one of only two such castles in the country, the other being at Lewes in East Sussex. Lincoln Castle remained in use as a prison and court into modern times and is one of the better preserved castles in England; the Crown Courts continue to this day. It is open to the public most days of the week and possible to walk around the walls from which there are views of the castle complex, cathedral, the city, and surrounding countryside. The castle is now owned by Lincolnshire County Council and is a scheduled monument.


As in Norwich and other places, the castle was used as a secure site in which to establish a gaol (prison; jail). At Lincoln, the gaol was built in 1787 and extended in 1847 – the 1787 Governor's House and the 1847 Prison are now Grade II* heritage listed buildings. The old prison is a three-storey stone building with 15 bays, and is connected to the 18th-century Governor's House via a single-storey prison chapel.
Imprisoned debtors were allowed some social contact, but the regime for criminals was designed to be one of isolation, according to the separate system. Consequently, the seating in the prison chapel is designed to enclose each prisoner individually so that the preacher could see everyone but each could see only him. By 1878 the system was discredited and the inmates were transferred to the new gaol in the eastern outskirts of Lincoln. The prison in the castle was left without a use until the Lincolnshire Archives were housed in its cells.
William Marwood, the 19th-century hangman, carried out his first execution at Lincoln. He used the long drop, designed to break the victim's neck rather than to strangle him, to execute Fred Horry in 1872. Until 1868, prisoners were publicly hanged on the mural tower at the north-east corner of the curtain wall, overlooking the upper town.
Parts of the prison are open as a museum, including the 19th-century chapel which is claimed to be the only one remaining in the world designed for the separate system (each seat enclosed). The prison has been used as a filming location, for example for the ITV television series Downton Abbey.
In 2012 the "Lincoln Castle Revealed" project, a three-year programme of renovation, began at the castle. Work involved creating a new exhibition centre in which to display Lincoln's copy of Magna Carta, building visitor facilities, and opening sections of the prison within the castle to the public. The scheme was completed in April 2015 to coincide with the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta. The Lincoln Castle Magna Carta is one of the four surviving originals, sealed by King John after his meeting with the Barons at Runnymede in 1215, and is accompanied by an exhibition explaining the origin of the Magna Carta and its far-reaching effects.


Michelham Priory is the site of a former Augustine Priory in Upper Dicker, East Sussex, England, United Kingdom. The surviving buildings are owned and administered by the Sussex Archaeological Society and are Grade I and Grade II listed.
A T-shaped stone-built structure, the east and north wings date from the 13th century and the west wing from the 16th century. The north wing, originally the Priors Lodging, comprises three storeys with an attic and the other two wings two storeys. The roof is tiled. The whole is surrounded by a moat, enclosing an area of almost 8 acres (3.2 ha).
A watermill in the grounds of the priory has been restored to working order and is open to the public.


The Augustinian Priory of the Holy Trinity was founded at Michelham in 1229 by Gilbert de Aquila, whose father had been a benefactor of Bayham Abbey in Kent and also had connections to Otham Abbey in East Sussex. Michelham was a daughter house of Hastings Priory.
All Gilbert's lands and honours were forfeited in 1235 as punishment for his going to Normandy without licence from King Henry III.
In 1278 and again in 1287, the prior was fined for exercising illegal privileges. On 26 June 1283, John de Kyrkeby renounced his election as Bishop of Rochester at Michelham Priory before John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury.
King Edward I stayed overnight at the priory on 14 September 1302. In 1353, the prior was fined 40d because a bridge at Rickney was broken and blocking the river. By 1398, the priory was reported to be in a ruinous condition. Robert Reade, bishop of Chichester, granted the advowsons of Alfriston and Fletching to Michelham Priory in that year.


The surviving refectory building originally contained a hall 40 feet (12 m) long. There was a window at the west end which was 13 feet 6 inches (4.11 m) wide, the outer frame of which survives today. This and the Prior's House are built of sandstone.
At the time of the Dissolution, the refectory was roofless. A second floor was added later and the building was divided into a number of rooms. Adjacent to the refectory is the Prior's House and crypt, which was above ground on account of the low-lying position of the priory and risk of flooding. There is a post-monastic extension on the west, built of stone. The whole is under a pegtile roof.
The refectory had been converted to use as a farmhouse by 1848. The crypt was divided into four rooms and used as a dairy by the 1850s. The whole is a Grade I listed building.


Euston Hall is a country house, with park by William Kent and Capability Brown, located in Euston, a small village in Suffolk located just south of Thetford, England. It is the family home of the Dukes of Grafton.


Washington Old Hall is a historic manor house in Washington, Tyne and Wear, England, United Kingdom. It lies in the centre of Washington, being surrounded by other villages. The building was the ancestral home of the family of George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States.


William de Hertburne (originally William Bayard), an ancestor of George Washington, assumed tenancy of the Wessyngtonlands from the Bishop of Durham in the late 12th century. Soon after, he changed his name to William de Wessyngton (later Washington). In the early 15th century Sir William Mallory married Dionysia Tempest, the last Wessyngton heir at the Hall.  Dionysia was daughter of Sir William Tempest and his cousin, Eleanor Wessyngton. In 1613, Sir John Mallory (a descendant of Sir William Mallory and Dionysia Tempest) and Anna Eure, shareholders in the Virginia Company, moved south to Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire, and the manor was sold to the Bishop of Durham.
The Hall continued to be used as a residence until the 19th century, when it became tenement flats and gradually fell into disrepair. In 1936 the building was declared unfit for human habitation, and was rescued from demolition by Fred Hill, a local teacher, who created what is now the "Friends of the Old Hall" to press for restoration of the building. Restoration began in 1937. Preservation work stopped during World War II, but was completed in 1955. The building was opened by the American Ambassador, Winthrop W. Aldrich. In 1957 the National Trust assumed responsibility for the building.
As a result of these historic ties, Washington, D.C., and City of Sunderland have announced a "friendship agreement," hoping to create cultural and economic ties with one another.


A La Ronde is an 18th-century 16-sided house located near Lympstone, Exmouth, Devon, England, and in the ownership of the National Trust. The house was built for two spinster cousins, Jane and Mary Parminter. It is a Grade I listed building, as are the adjacent Point-In-View chapel, school and almshouses, together with a manse, which were also built by the cousins. The gardens are Grade II listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.


Family tradition maintains that the house was designed by Miss Jane herself. It is more likely, however, that the plans were drawn up by "a Mr. Lowder" mentioned by a 19th-century writer. Mary's aunt by marriage, also Mary, had a sister Anne Glass, who married a Commander John Lowder, a banker. In 1778 Lowder became a property developer and built Lansdowne Place West in Bath.
Commander Lowder, however, had a son, also named John (1781–1829) who practised as a gentleman architect in Bath. Although only 17 years of age when A La Ronde was built, it is entirely feasible that the younger Lowder designed the house. In 1816 he went on to design the unusual Bath and District National School (demolished 1896), a 32-sided building with wedge-shaped classrooms.  A La Ronde may reasonably be interpreted as an early prototype for the much larger later project.


The Parminter family, which could be traced back in North Devon as far back as 1600, had acquired considerable wealth as merchants. Jane was the daughter of Barnstaple wine merchant John Parminter who had a business in Lisbon, where she was born in 1750. Jane grew up in London and became guardian to her orphan cousin Mary. On her father's death in 1784, she decided to embark on the Grand Tour accompanied by her invalid sister Elizabeth, her younger orphaned cousin, and a female friend from London.
The two cousins became greatly attached to each other and in 1795 decided to set up home together in Devon. They negotiated the purchase of 15 acres (6.1 ha) of land near Exmouth. Once their house had been built they lived secluded and somewhat eccentric lives for many years until 1811 when Miss Jane died.
The house was completed in about 1796, and its design is supposedly based on the Basilica of San Vitale. It consisted of 20 rooms, the ground floor ones radiating out from a 10.7 metres (35 ft) high hallway, named "The Octagon", and originally connected by sliding doors. The lower ground floor housed a wine cellar, strong room and kitchen and an upper octagonal gallery housed an intricate hand-crafted frieze. Between the main rooms were triangular-shaped closets with diamond shaped windows. Much of the internal decoration was produced by the two cousins, whose handicraft skills were excellent. The house also contained many of the objets d'art, especially shells, which the cousins brought back from their European Tour.
The terms of Mary's will specified that the property could be inherited only by "unmarried kinswomen". This condition held firm until in 1886 the house was transferred to the Reverend Oswald Reichel, a brother of one of the former occupants. Reichel, the sole male owner in over two hundred years, was responsible for substantial structural changes. These included the construction of a water tower and laundry room, the installation of a bathroom and central heating, the construction of upstairs bedrooms with dormer windows, the fitting of first-floor windows, a heavy pulley dumb-waiter and speaking tubes, the replacement of the original thatch with roof tiles and the addition of an external catwalk.
Since taking ownership, conservation measures by The National Trust have included removal of all but one of the very large central heating radiators installed by Reichel, restoration of the wall coverings from a deep red to the original pale green and rigging of the delicate Shell Gallery on the uppermost storey of the house with a CCTV system to allow observation without risk of damage. The original kitchen and strong room on the lower ground floor now function as a modern kitchen and tea-room.


Chastleton House (/ˈtʃæsəltən/) is a Jacobean country house at Chastleton, Oxfordshire, England, close to Moreton-in-Marsh (grid reference SP2429). It has been owned by the National Trust since 1991 and is a Grade I listed building.


Chastleton House was built between 1607 and 1612, possibly by Robert Smythson, for Walter Jones, who had made his fortune from the law, although his family were originally Welsh wool merchants. The estate was bought in 1604 from Robert Catesby, although his residence was demolished to make way for the new house and no traces of the original building on this spot remain. The house is built of Cotswold stone, around a small courtyard, called the Dairy Court.
Chastleton House is famous for an episode from the English Civil War in which a loyal wife duped (and drugged) Roundhead soldiers to save her husband. Sarah Jewell, granddaughter of the art critic Alan Clutton-Brock and his first wife Shelagh Archer, who died in a road accident in 1936, recalled her childhood reenactments of the scene when visiting her grandfather and his second wife Barbara (née Foy-Mitchell), the last owners of the manor (it having passed from the Jones family to the Clutton-Brocks, relatives by marriage):
"My sisters and I used to love running around searching for the secret room where Arthur Jones, the grandson of Walter Jones, hid after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Arthur was a Royalist and had been fighting for Charles II but the troops were defeated by Cromwell and Arthur galloped back to Chastleton with Cromwell's soldiers in hot pursuit. His quick-witted wife, Sarah – my childhood heroine – hid him in the secret closet over the porch and although the pursuing soldiers found his exhausted horse in the stables they couldn't find him.  Sarah saved Arthur's life by lacing the soldiers' beer with laudanum and saddling up one of their horses for his escape as the soldiers slumbered. My sisters and I used to lie on the bed in the secret room and pretend we could hear the horses galloping towards us. The bed has now gone and the entrance to the room is barred with one of the National Trust's trademarks: a rope."
Mary Whitmore Jones inherited Chastleton in 1874 at the age of 51 when her brother, Willie, died. She was thus the first female heir of the estate. Mary was a prolific writer and also the designer, between 1875 and 1898, of the Chastleton Patience Board, subsequently manufactured by J. Jaques & Son. After a few years she handed over the management of the estate to her nephew, Thomas Whitmore Harris. The house was then rented and Mary moved into Chastleton Rectory as a lodger. She died in 1915.


Melford Hall is a stately home in the village of Long Melford, Suffolk, England. Since 1786 it has been the seat of the Parker Baronets and is still lived in by the Hyde Parker family. Since 1960 it has been owned by the National Trust.
The hall was mostly constructed in the 16th century, incorporating parts of a medieval building held by the abbots of Bury St Edmunds which had been in use since before 1065. It has similar roots to nearby Kentwell Hall.
It passed from the abbots during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and was later granted by Queen Mary to Sir William Cordell. From Cordell it passed via his sister to Thomas and Mary Savage before being sold back into another male Cordell line.
James Howell described the hall and garden in the times of Elizabeth Savage, Countess Rivers in a letter in 1619.
During the Stour Valley Riots of 1642 the house was attacked and damaged by an anti-Catholic crowd. In 1786 it was sold to Sir Harry Parker, 6th Baronet, son of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, 5th Baronet.
Beatrix Potter was a cousin of the family and was a frequent visitor to the hall from the 1890s onwards.
One wing of the hall was gutted by fire in February 1942 but rebuilt after World War II, retaining the external Tudor brickwork with 1950s interior design.
The hall was first opened to the public in 1955 by Ulla, Lady Hyde Parker. In 1958 Sue Ryder leased the south wing to house her holiday scheme for Polish concentration camp survivors. This scheme, which ran at Melford Hall for 11 years, eventually grew into her work with charity Sue Ryder.
In 1960 it passed to the National Trust. It is generally open on weekend afternoons in April and October, and on afternoons from Wednesday to Sunday during May to September.
The Hall grounds host a number of events including the "Big Night Out" every November to mark Guy Fawkes Night and from 2013 the annual LeeStock Music Festival


Lyddington Bede House is a historic house in Rutland, England, owned and opened to the public by English Heritage.
The existing Grade I listed building is a part of a former palace of the Bishops of Lincoln, situated next to St Andrew's Church in the village of Lyddington. The watch tower or gazebo is separately listed as Grade I and the boundary walls are Grade II. The site is a scheduled ancient monument.


Aston Hall is a Grade I listed Jacobean house in Aston, Birmingham, England, designed by John Thorpe and built between 1618 and 1635. It is a leading example of the Jacobean prodigy house.
In 1864, the house was bought by Birmingham Corporation, becoming the first historic country house to pass into municipal ownership, and is still owned by Birmingham City Council. It is now a community museum managed by the Birmingham Museums Trust and, following a major renovation completed in 2009, is open to the public spring to winter.


Packwood House is a timber-framed Tudor manor house in Packwood on the Solihull border near Lapworth, Warwickshire.  Owned by the National Trust since 1941, the house is a Grade I listed building. It has a wealth of tapestries and fine furniture, and is known for the garden of yews.


The house began as a modest timber-framed farmhouse constructed for John Fetherston between 1556 and 1560. The last member of the Fetherston family died in 1876.  In 1904 the house was purchased by Birmingham industrialist Alfred Ash. It was inherited by Graham Baron Ash (Baron in this case being a name not a title) in 1925, who spent the following two decades creating a house of Tudor character. He purchased an extensive collection of 16th- and 17th-century furniture, some obtained from nearby Baddesley Clinton. The great barn of the farm was converted into a Tudor-style hall with sprung floor for dancing, and was connected to the main house by the addition of a Long Gallery in 1931.
In 1941, Ash donated the house and gardens to the National Trust in memory of his parents but continued to live in the house until 1947 when he moved to Wingfield Castle.


Apsley House stands at the site of an old lodge that belonged to the crown. During the Interregnum newer buildings were erected between what is now Old Park Lane and Hyde Park Corner. In the 1600s after the Restoration they were leased by James Hamilton (died 1673) and renewed by Elizabeth his widow in 1692 on a 99-year lease (Hamilton Place takes its name from that family). Immediately before Apsley House was built the site was occupied by a tavern called the Hercules Pillars (immortalised by Henry Fielding in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling as the location where Squire Western resides when he first journeys up to London).
The house was originally built in red brick by Robert Adam between 1771 and 1778 for Lord Apsley, the Lord Chancellor, who gave the house its name. Some Adam interiors survive: the Piccadilly Drawing Room with its apsidal end and Adam fireplace, and the Portico Room, behind the giant Corinthian portico added by Wellington.
The house was given the popular nickname of Number One, London, since it was the first house passed by visitors who travelled from the countryside after the toll gates at Knightsbridge. It was originally part of a contiguous line of great houses on Piccadilly, demolished to widen Park Lane: its official address remains 149 Piccadilly, W1J 7NT.
In 1807 the house was purchased by Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, the elder brother of Sir Arthur Wellesley, but in 1817 financial difficulties forced him to sell it to his famous brother, by then the Duke of Wellington, who needed a London base from which to pursue his new career in politics.
Wellington employed the architect Benjamin Dean Wyatt to carry out renovations in two phases: in the first, begun in 1819, he added a three-storey extension to the north east, housing a State Dining Room, bedrooms and dressing rooms. The scagliola ornamentations, that resemble marble inlays, were produced in Coade stone from the Coade Ornamental Stone Manufactory in Lambeth.
The second phase, started after Wellington had become Prime Minister in 1828, included a new staircase and the "Waterloo Gallery" on the west side of the house. The red-brick exterior was clad in Bath stone, and a pedimented portico added. Wyatt's original estimate for the work was £23,000, but the need to repair structural defects discovered during the work led to costs escalating to more than £61,000. Wyatt introduced his own version of French style to the interior, notably in the Waterloo Gallery and the florid wrought iron stair-rail, described by Pevsner as "just turning from Empire to a neo-Rococo".
The Waterloo Gallery is named after the Duke's famous victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. The Waterloo Banquet was held annually to commemorate the famous victory of 18 June 1815. The first banquets were held in the Dining Room but in 1828 when Wyatt completed the Waterloo Gallery the banquet was moved there and became a much larger event, seating 74 as opposed to 36 in the dining room. The Duke's equestrian statue can be seen across the busy road, cloaked and watchful, the plinth guarded at each corner by an infantryman. This statue was cast from guns captured at the battle.
Gerald Wellesley, 7th Duke of Wellington, gave the house and its most important contents to the nation in 1947, but by the Wellington Museum Act 1947 the right of the family to occupy just over half the house was preserved "so long as there is a Duke of Wellington". The family apartments are now on the north side of the house, concentrated on the second floor.


Apsley House is the London townhouse of the Dukes of Wellington. It stands alone at Hyde Park Corner, on the south-east corner of Hyde Park, facing south towards the busy traffic roundabout in the centre of which stands the Wellington Arch. It is a Grade I listed building.
It is sometimes referred to as the Wellington Museum, its official designation under a 1947 Act of Parliament. The house is now run by English Heritage and is open to the public as a museum and art gallery, exhibiting the Wellington Collection, a large collection of paintings, other artworks and memorabilia of the career of the 1st Duke. The 9th Duke of Wellington retains the use of part of the buildings. It is perhaps the only preserved example of an English aristocratic townhouse from its period. The practice has been to maintain the rooms as far as possible in the original style and decor.


Hever Castle (pronounced /ˈhiːvər/ HEE-vər) is located in the village of Hever, Kent, near Edenbridge, 30 miles (48 km) south-east of London, England. It began as a country house, built in the 13th century. From 1462 to 1539, it was the seat of the Boleyn (originally 'Bullen') family.
Anne Boleyn, the second queen consort of King Henry VIII of England, spent her early youth there after her father, Thomas Boleyn, inherited it in 1505. The castle passed to him upon the death of his father, Sir William Boleyn. It later came into the possession of King Henry VIII's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. The castle is now open to the public as a tourist attraction.


There have been three main periods in the construction of this historic castle. The oldest part of the castle dates to 1270 and consisted of the gatehouse and a walled bailey. It was then owned by James Fiennes, 1st Baron Saye and Sele. The second period was when the castle, then in need of repair, was converted into a manor in 1462 by Geoffrey Boleyn, younger brother of Thomas Boleyn, Master of Gonville Hall, Cambridge. He added a Tudor dwelling within the walls. The third period of repair and renovation was in the 20th century, when it was acquired by William Waldorf Astor.
Geoffrey Boleyn's grandson, Thomas Boleyn, inherited the castle in 1505. He lived there with his wife Lady Elizabeth Howard and their children George, Mary and Anne (the future wife of Henry VIII). It is not known if Anne was born at Hever (the year of her birth is not certain), but she lived there until she was sent to the Netherlands in 1513 to receive an education at the court of the Archduchess Margaret. Henry VIII often used the nearby Bolebroke Castle to conduct his courtship with Anne.
The property came into the possession of Henry VIII after the death of Anne's father, Thomas Boleyn, in 1539. He bestowed it upon Anne of Cleves in 1540 as part of the settlement following the annulment of their marriage. Hever Castle still has one of Henry VIII's private locks, taken with him on his various visits to noblemen's houses and fitted to every door for his security.
The property subsequently passed through various owners, including the Waldegrave family from 1557 to 1715, the Humfreys family to 1749 and the Meade-Waldo family from 1749 to 1903. During this latter period of ownership, the castle fell into a poor state of repair, during which time it was leased to various private tenants.
In 1903, it was acquired and restored by the American millionaire William Waldorf Astor, who used it as a family residence. He added the Italian Garden to display his collection of statuary and ornaments.
In 1983, the Astor family sold the castle to Broadland Properties Limited, which is run by the Guthrie family.
The castle was used as the location for a music video by Libera in 2006. The Loggia on the lake was used as the location for a peace conference in the comedy-drama The Great.


Hever Castle is now a tourist attraction, drawing on its links to Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII, its mazes, gardens and lakes. There is an annual event programme with assorted events, including jousting tournaments and archery displays in the summer months and an annual patchwork and quilting exhibition in September. The castle has also become the venue for a triathlon.
The castle offers three floors containing antique furniture, Anne Boleyn's prayer books, instruments of torture, and a large collection of Tudor’s paintings. There is also a museum of the Kent and Sharpshooters Yeomanry.
The remains of the original country house timbers can still be seen within the stone walls of the fortification, while the gatehouse is the only original part of the castle. It has the oldest working original portcullis in England.
The grounds of the castle include a yew maze, planted in 1904. There is also a water maze, opened in 1999, the object of which is to reach the folly at the centre without getting wet, while in the children's adventure playground there is a tower maze (currently undergoing reconstruction). The castle gardens contain a wide range of features, including an Italianate garden (including Fernery), rose gardens, herb garden, and topiary.


The fashion for Neo-Palladian houses had started in London between 1715 and 1720. It spread out to the provinces and did not reach Worcestershire until the 1750s. The two finest examples of this style in Worcestershire were Croome Court built between 1751 and 1752 and Hagley Hall designed by Sanderson Miller (with the assistance of the London architect John Sanderson) between 1754 and 1760. Notable Neo-Palladian features incorporated into Hagley Hall include the plain exterior and the corner towers with pyramidal roofs (a feature first used by Inigo Jones in the design of Wilton House in Wiltshire), and of Venetian windows. The house contains a fine example of Rococo plasterwork by Francesco Vassali and a unique collection of 18th-century Chippendale furniture and family portraits, including works by Van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, Cornelius Johnson, and Peter Lely. A catalogue of the collection was published in 1900.
On Christmas Eve 1925, a disastrous fire swept through the house destroying much of the Library and many of the pictures. Despite boiling lead pouring from the roof through the house, all those within managed to escape. At the height of the blaze when nothing more could be salvaged from inside, the 9th Viscount was heard to mutter "my life's work [is] destroyed". He and his wife painstakingly restored the house, except for the staff quarters on the top floor.
To the north of the Hall, and separated from it only by the narrow Hall Drive, is the extensive stable block. The buildings are grouped around two courtyards. The stable block no longer serves its original purpose, but is now operated as a business park for small local businesses.
A short walk to the west of the Hall, facing its rear facade, is the parish church of St John the Baptist, and its surrounding churchyard. With two earlier exceptions, members of the Lyttelton family, owners of Hagley Hall and their relatives, have only been buried in the churchyard since 1875; also there are the owners of other large houses and estates in the area, and their servants as well. Immediately adjacent to the church is the local cricket ground with its separate clubhouse. Hagley Cricket Club, first formed in 1834, was for long associated with the Lyttelton family.


Hagley Hall is a  Grade I listed 18th-century house in Hagley, Worcestershire, the home of the Lyttelton family. It was the creation of George, 1st Lord Lyttelton (1709–1773), secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales, poet and man of letters and briefly Chancellor of the Exchequer. Before the death of his father (Sir Thomas Lyttelton) in 1751, he began to landscape the grounds in the new Picturesque style, and between 1754 and 1760 it was he who was responsible for the building of the Neo-Palladian house that survives to this day.
After a fire in 1925, most of the house was restored, but the uppermost floor of the servants' quarters was not, which means that the present roof line between the towers is lower than it was when first constructed.
The estate fell into disrepair and incurred a mounting debt beginning in the 1970s. The 11th Viscount Cobham was forced to sell off large tracts of estate land to keep it afloat (in addition to paying for his high-profile divorce). His brother and successor Christopher Charles Lyttelton, 12th Viscount Cobham began restoration works in both the main house and the park. The park is open to the public and part of the house is available as a venue for hire.
As of 2012, the hall is the family home to Christopher Charles Lyttelton, 12th Viscount Cobham and his wife Tessa.


Newark Park was originally a four-storey (three storeys over a basement) Tudor hunting lodge built between 1544 and 1556 for Sir Nicholas Poyntz (d.1557), whose main seat was at Acton Court near Bristol, some fifteen miles to the south, an easy day's ride. The Poyntz family were anciently feudal barons of Curry Mallet in Somerset, later of Iron Acton in Gloucestershire. Poyntz was a Groom of the Privy Chamber to Henry VIII and had recently remodeled Acton Park in anticipation of a royal visit. "Newark is equally fashionable in terms of its precocious classicism," observes Nicholas Cooper, who points out its rigorously symmetrical front (illustration), unprecedented in the main body of any great house in its time, and the correct Tuscan order of its original main door. The house was then called "New Work" and was partly constructed with building materials from the recently dissolved Kingswood Abbey, some five miles away. The lodge was three bays wide and of single-pile construction, one room deep. In the basement was a kitchen, there were two reception rooms on the ground floor and a banqueting room on the first. Modest sleeping quarters were provided on the third floor, and the roof was flat so that it could be used as a pleasurable lookout over the surrounding countryside, in which it enjoys a commanding position. It was built at about the same time as nearby Siston Court was being built by Sir Maurice Denys (d.1563), first cousin of Poyntz's wife Jane Berkeley. Poyntz's original lodge now forms the eastern part of the present structure.
In 1600 the lodge was sold to the Low family of London who in 1672 significantly extended the building by the addition of a second four-storey building to the west, which was joined to the original by a passage stairway creating an H-shaped footprint. The Lows owned Newark Park until 1722 when it was sold for £6,010 (equivalent to £1,006,000 today) to the Harding family who after making some minor alterations sold it to James Clutterbuck. The Clutterbucks engaged the architect James Wyatt to remodel it into a four-square house in 1790. Their improvements included the creation of a formal deer-park to the south of the house and landscaping of the rest of the grounds.
The Clutterbucks left Newark in 1860 and let it out, but even though it was tenanted the occupants continued to make alterations and improvements. Mrs Annie Poole King family, widow of a Bristol shipping merchant took the leasehold in 1898, moving from the larger Standish House at Stonehouse, Gloucestershire. A member of the Berkeley Hunt, she had five children, plus a house staff of a coachman, cook, housekeeper, and gardener. The King family added servants' quarters on the north side, installed a hot-air heating system and ran hot water to the second floor. The Kings stayed at Newark until 1949 when the last of the line died and the then owner, Mrs Power-Clutterbuck, gave Newark Park and its estates to the National Trust.


Newark Park is a Grade I listed country house of Tudor origins located near the village of Ozleworth, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire. The house sits in an estate of 700 acres (2.8 km²) at the southern end of the Cotswold escarpment with views down the Severn Valley to the Severn Estuary. The house and estate have been in the care of the National Trust since 1946.


When the Trust took ownership they did not open Newark Park to the public but instead let it out to tenants who ran it as a nursing home. By 1970 the house was in a state of disrepair and the gardens overgrown. It was in this state that American architect Robert (Bob) Parsons (1920–2000), who had long expressed a desire to take on an English country house in need of repair, took the tenancy and began a painstaking programme of renovation, conservation and rehabilitation to both the house and the grounds. It was due to Bob Parson's efforts that the architectural importance of the house was acknowledged and the Grade I listing achieved.  Parson's partner, Michael Claydon, moved to Newark Park in 1982 and became actively involved in the ongoing restoration.  After Parson's death in 2000, Claydon maintained stewardship of the house and continued restoration works in the landscaped parkland.


Highclere Castle /ˈhaɪklɪər/ is a Grade I listed country house built in 1679 and largely renovated in the 1840s, with a park designed by Capability Brown in the 18th century. The 5,000-acre (2,000 ha) estate is in Highclere in Hampshire, England, about 5 miles (8 km) south of Newbury, Berkshire, and 9.5 miles (15 km) north of Andover, Hampshire. It is the country seat of the Earls of Carnarvon, a branch of the Anglo-Welsh Herbert family.
Highclere Castle has been used as a filming location for several films and television series, including 1990s comedy series Jeeves and Wooster, and achieved international fame as the main location for the ITV historical drama series Downton Abbey (2010–15) and the 2019  and 2022 films based on it.
The house, Egyptian exhibition, and gardens are open to the public for self-guided tours during the summer months and at other times during the rest of the year, such as Christmas and Easter. The house also holds ticketed events, such as the Battle Proms picnic concert, and special guided tours throughout the year.


In the 21st century Lord and Lady Carnarvon undertook repairs to the roof. In 2007, they created the Egyptian Exhibition, which lies in the cellars of the castle and tells the story of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by the 5th Earl. By 2009, the castle was again in need of major repairs, with only the ground and first floors remaining usable. Water damage had caused stonework to crumble and ceilings to collapse; at least 50 rooms were uninhabitable. The 8th Earl and his family were living in a "modest cottage in the grounds"; he said a lack of repair by his ancestors caused the castle's long-term problems. Repairs needed for the entire estate were estimated to cost around £12 million, £1.8 million of which was urgently needed just for the castle.
The castle was used as the main filming location for the ITV/PBS drama series Downton Abbey, which brought the castle international fame. The increased numbers of visitors to the castle have allowed for repairs on both Highclere's turrets and its interior. The family attributed this increase in interest to the on-site filming of Downton Abbey. The family now live in Highclere Castle at various times throughout the year, but return to their cottage when the castle is open to the public.


Originally granted by the king to the Fitzwilliam family, Highclere Castle had several owners during the next 125 years.
The palace was rebuilt as Place House in 1679 when it was purchased by Sir Robert Sawyer, the Attorney General to Charles II and James II, who was a lawyer, MP, Speaker, and college friend of Samuel Pepys. In 1692, Sawyer bequeathed the mansion at Highclere to his only daughter, Margaret Sawyer, the first wife of the 8th Earl of Pembroke, Thomas Herbert. Their second son, Robert Sawyer Herbert, inherited Highclere, began its portrait collection and created the garden temples. His nephew and heir Henry Herbert was created Baron Porchester and later Earl of Carnarvon by George III.


Fyne Court is a National Trust-owned nature reserve and visitor centre in Broomfield, Somerset, England. It was a large English country house belonging to the Crosse family since its construction, although the date when it was built is not known.
Andrew Crosse conducted a series of experiments with electricity, including the development of large voltaic piles, at the house during his ownership in the early 19th century. The main building of Fyne Court burnt down in 1894. The buildings which survived the fire have been used as offices and a visitor centre by organisations such as the Somerset Wildlife Trust and Quantock Hills AONB Service since it came into the ownership of the National Trust in 1967. It is surrounded by a large country estate of woodland, ponds and meadows. Within the grounds are a folly and boathouse.


The Firs in Lower Broadheath, Worcestershire, England was the birthplace of Edward Elgar. The cottage now houses a museum administered by the National Trust. Edward Elgar was born at the house on 2 June 1857, and lived there for the first two years of his life. The museum comprises the Birthplace Cottage and its  garden, and the modern Elgar Centre, opened in 2000, which houses further exhibitions and a function room.


Sledmere House is a Grade I listed Georgian country house, containing Chippendale, Sheraton and French furnishings and many fine pictures, set within a park designed by Capability Brown. It is located in the village of Sledmere, between Driffield and Malton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The present house was begun in 1751, extended in the 1790s, and rebuilt after a fire in 1911. It was once the home of Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet, noted English traveller and diplomatic advisor, and is now the home of Sir Tatton Sykes, 8th Baronet.
The house is built in Nottinghamshire ashlar on three storeys to an H-shaped plan.


The Long Library at Sledmere, superbly restored, is one of the most beautiful rooms in England. The Drawing Room and Music Room were decorated by Joseph Rose. The Music Room contains a fine organ case designed by Samuel Green for the original house in 1751.  However, there is nothing behind the facade pipes and the organ is unplayable. The Turkish Room was designed for Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet, by an Armenian artist, David Ohannessian, inspired by one of the sultan's apartments in the Yeni Mosque in Istanbul. The tiles were made in Kutahya, Anatolia in 1913 in Ohannessian's workshop, the Société Ottomane de Faïence. The attached Roman Catholic chapel has a fine ceiling painted by Thomas Errington. It depicts the four winged creatures of the Evangelist in the Chancel and in the Nave, a variety of birds including a mute swan, grey heron, barn swallow and northern lapwing.
Sledmere House is set within a park of 960 acres (3.9 km²) designed in 1777 by Capability Brown and executed by Sir Christopher Sykes, 2nd Baronet. The plan still survives in the house. Its gardens include a paved sculpture court (1911), an 18th-century walled rose garden and a recently laid out knot garden.
Sledmere Monument is a 120 feet (37 m) stone monument along the B1252 road on Garton Hill, built in memory of Sir Tatton Sykes, 4th Baronet, by his friends and neighbours in 1865.