Stately Home & Country House Tours in Britain
These are holidays for people who like walking into a house and being told who lived there, who paid for the ceiling and why the chairs are arranged as they are. Each tour takes one county at a time — Kent, Suffolk, Hampshire, Shropshire, Yorkshire, Devon, Pembrokeshire — and works through its houses, gardens and castles from a single hotel base.
Most run four or five days by private coach with an experienced driver, breakfast and evening meals, and all the suggested excursions. A good many National Trust properties appear on the itineraries, so a current membership card is worth packing.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Houses & Estates Tours
No, but it helps. The prices are quoted on the basis that National Trust entry is covered by your own membership card, so members pay nothing further at the door. Non-members pay the individual entrance fees on the day. On most of these itineraries several properties are Trust-owned, so it is worth asking us for the list before you decide either way.
More than you might expect, though it is spread over the day rather than done in one go. A large garden such as Sissinghurst or Studley Royal takes an hour or two on gravel and grass, and historic houses mean staircases, cobbles, uneven thresholds and rooms without lifts. The coach drops close to the entrance wherever it can. If stairs or distances are a concern, tell us which tour you are looking at and we will go through it property by property.
It depends what you want to see. Spring departures catch bulbs, magnolias and the rhododendrons and azaleas at woodland gardens such as Colby. Mid-June is roses, which is when the collection at Mottisfont is at its peak. July and August bring the herbaceous borders and the White Garden at Sissinghurst; autumn brings colour and fewer people. The dates we run vary by tour, so check the departures listed on each page.
Yes, and plenty do. Most of these houses-and-gardens tours set aside a number of single rooms with no supplement — six on several of them — and where a supplement applies it is stated on the tour page. Those no-supplement singles go early, so it is worth asking us what is still available on the departure you have in mind.
Breakfast and evening meal every day, taken at the hotel, and on some tours tea and coffee at dinner as well. Lunch is not listed in the inclusions, so that is normally your own arrangement — usually at a property tearoom or in whichever town you are visiting, which most people find is the easiest way to do it. Any specific dietary requirements should be raised with us at the time of booking.
Yes. Any of these tours can be run as a private group, either exactly as published or adjusted to suit your members' interests and where they live. Costings are based on a full coach, so numbers matter to the price. Send us your group size, the months that suit you and your preferred pick-up area, and we will come back with a quotation and a suggested itinerary.
Where these tours travel
Each holiday settles in one place and works outwards, which suits counties where the great houses sit within half an hour of one another.
- Kent — Sissinghurst, Chartwell, Knole, Scotney Castle and the Trust-owned village of Chiddingstone, all within easy reach of Maidstone.
- Hampshire — the walled rose garden at Mottisfont, Hinton Ampner, Tudor brickwork at The Vyne, and the working watermill on the Itchen in Winchester.
- Suffolk — the Italianate rotunda at Ickworth, the Anglo-Saxon burial mounds at Sutton Hoo and the timber-framed Guildhall at Lavenham.
- Shropshire — Attingham Park, Dudmaston Hall, Benthall Hall and the thirteenth-century fortified manor at Stokesay.
- Yorkshire — Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, Goddards and Treasurer's House in York, and East Riddlesden Hall beside the Aire at Keighley.
- Devon and Pembrokeshire — Saltram, Dartmouth and Dartmoor in one; Tenby's Tudor Merchant's House, Colby Woodland Garden and Picton in the other.
National Trust entry and your membership card
The itineraries lean heavily on National Trust houses, and the tour inclusions are written on the basis that you are a member: where you see "entrance to National Trust properties if member", the price assumes your card covers the door.
If you are not a member, that does not rule you out — it simply means one or two entry fees fall to you, and on a five-day tour with four or five Trust properties on it, membership can work out at much the same money. Ask us before you book and we will tell you which properties on your chosen departure are Trust-owned and roughly what the alternative comes to.
Not everything is National Trust. Stokesay is in the care of English Heritage, Warwick Castle is run commercially, Picton and Britannia Royal Naval College are neither, and where a specific entrance is included the tour page says so.
Castles, manors and Arts and Crafts houses
"Stately home" covers a great deal of ground, and part of the pleasure of a week like this is the contrast between one afternoon and the next. Lavenham Guildhall is a Tudor merchants' hall with a floor that slopes; Ickworth is a domed Italianate palace built by an earl who spent most of his life abroad.
Castles appear as often as houses. Scotney is a moated ruin left deliberately romantic in the middle of its garden, Stokesay is a manor that never really stopped being a house, Cilgerran sits above a wooded gorge on the Teifi, and Castle Drogo on the edge of Dartmoor was finished in 1930 — granite, Lutyens, and the last castle of any size built in England.
Then the quieter twentieth-century houses: Goddards in York, built for the Terry chocolate family, and Hinton Ampner, rebuilt after fire by a man with very firm views on where a hedge should go.
Private tours for clubs and societies
A good number of these houses-and-gardens weeks go out as private groups: gardening clubs, U3A branches, church groups, National Trust supporter associations and groups of friends who have travelled together for years.
The advantage is control. A private group can take an existing itinerary as it stands, or ask for the emphasis shifted — more time in the gardens and less in the interiors, a longer stop in York or Bath, a lecture over dinner from one of your own members. Pick-up arrangements can usually be built around where your members actually live rather than a fixed departure point.
Prices on this page are quoted on a full coach, so the sums work best when a group can fill most of the seats. Tell us your numbers, your preferred month and your part of the country, and we will put a costing together.
