Sizergh sits just outside Kendal, thirteen kilometres south-east of Windermere and technically outside the Lake District National Park, and it is the best furnished historic house within easy reach of the lake.
It has been the home of the Strickland family since 1239 — one of the longest unbroken family occupations of any house in England — and the family still live in part of it, which is unusual for a National Trust property and gives the place an atmosphere that a fully institutional house does not have.
At its core is a fourteenth-century pele tower, the fortified stone keep that the border counties built against Scottish raiding — thick walls, small windows and a single defensible entrance. Sizergh’s is among the largest surviving.
Around it the family added Elizabethan ranges in the sixteenth century, and then Georgian alterations, so that walking through the house is walking forward through six centuries in about twenty minutes.
The Tudor panelling is the reason people come. Sizergh’s carved oak interiors are among the finest in England, and the Inlaid Chamber — the best of them — was sold to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1891 and has since been returned on long loan, so it can be seen where it was made.
Beyond that: family portraits, Stuart relics collected through the Stricklands’ Jacobite loyalties, furniture accumulated over centuries rather than assembled by a curator, and rooms that read as a family house rather than a display.
Substantial, and worth as much time as the house.
The limestone rock garden, laid out in the 1920s, is the largest owned by the National Trust — a quarter-acre of terraces, pools and channels planted with dwarf conifers, ferns and Japanese maples, and it is spectacular in autumn when the acers turn.
There is also a formal garden, a kitchen garden, a wild flower meadow and a lake, and the whole thing sits in 1,600 acres of estate with waymarked walks through orchards, limestone pasture and woodland.
The estate is one of the best places in Cumbria for wildlife — it holds hawfinches, a scarce bird nationally, and the limestone grassland is exceptionally rich.
By car: thirteen kilometres south-east of Windermere, signposted from the A590/A591 junction near Kendal. Around twenty minutes.
By train: Oxenholme is the nearest station, on the West Coast main line, about five kilometres away.
By bus: services between Kendal and the south lakes pass nearby.
There is a large car park, free to National Trust members.
National Trust property, with the usual seasonal opening — the house has shorter hours than the garden and closes over the winter, so check before travelling.
There is a café in the old barn and a shop.
The house has stairs and the pele tower is reached by a spiral staircase; the garden and estate paths are more accessible, with a mobility route.
Allow half a day for house, garden and a walk on the estate.
Sizergh sits beside Kendal, which has museums, an arts centre and proper shops, and it pairs naturally with Levens Hall a few kilometres south — a house of similar date with the oldest topiary garden in the world, planted in the 1690s and still maintained to the original design.
Doing both in a day is comfortable and gives you two of the finest gardens in the north of England.
The pele tower at its heart is fourteenth-century, with Elizabethan and Georgian additions around it. The Strickland family have lived here since 1239.
Yes — the Stricklands still occupy part of the house, which is unusual for a National Trust property.
A limestone rock garden of the 1920s, the largest owned by the National Trust, planted with dwarf conifers and Japanese maples. It is at its best in autumn.
Just outside the national park boundary, near Kendal — about twenty minutes from Windermere.
Half a day for the house, the garden and a short estate walk.