Photo: Anthony Masi from UK, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Grand 16th-century "prodigy house": Queen Elizabeth I and her courtiers toured the country, and her nobles vied to construct bling palaces suitable for receiving them all. This example was built 1558-1587 by Sir William Cecil her Lord High Treasurer, and the Cecil family still live here. The Elizabethan exterior is little altered, but the interior was re-modelled in the 18th century and stocked with industrial quantities of Italian artwork. There are also fine collections of furniture and porcelain. The parkland (open all year) was laid out by Capability Brown and nowadays includes a modern sculpture garden and "Garden of Surprises", which proved too surprising for some visitors so they've turned off the water features. The house and gardens are often used as film and TV locations so check ahead for closures around this.
Burghley House is a grand 16th-century English country house near Stamford, Lincolnshire. It is a leading example of the Elizabethan prodigy house, built and still lived in by the senior (Exeter) branch of the Cecil family and is Grade I listed.
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Established 1890 in the Capability Brown park, a round off white tees is 6312 yards, par 70.
The Priory was re-established around 1082 under William the Conqueror, on the site of a 7th century monastery destroyed in the 11th. It was a "cell" - an outpost - of Durham cathedral monastery until both were dissolved in 1538. What you see now is the exterior of the bricked-up nave, rebuilt in the 19th century, with a fine west front. Other remnants are buried below the present ground level.
This was built in the 12th century and known as "St Martin's Without" as it was beyond the town wall. It was rebuilt in Perpendicular style in the 15th century and re-modelled in the 19th, so at first glance it looks Victorian. It contains tombs of the Cecil family, including Sir William who built Burghley House, and of the enormous Daniel Lambert. It's Anglican, with services on Sunday at 9:30AM, and sometimes used as a concert venue.
at the junction of A6121 and A1175 is the only surviving part of Greyfriars Franciscan friary, established in 1230 and suppressed in 1534. Richard Duke of York spent two nights here in 1476 but little cared, as he'd died 12 years earlier at the Battle of Wakefield and was being conveyed for re-burial at Fotheringhay. The land is now part of Stamford & Rutland Hospital.
Anglican church dating from 1225; the tower is 13th-century, the exterior 15th, and the interior was re-worked by the Victorians. William Bruges (1375–1450), first Garter King of Arms is buried in the church.
began in the 12th century in St Mary's Church, moving east onto St Paul's Rd in the 16th. It's near Greyfriars Gatehouse and you can peek through the entrance at the oldest part, the former St Paul's Church.