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These are a series of flooded gravel pits. They have water skiing, wakeboarding, jet skiing, dinghy sailing, windsurfing and canoeing, a dry ski slope, and a 15 metre climbing tower. There's also a camping and caravan park, open Mar-Jan.
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is a small village 3½ miles southeast of Stamford. The parish church is Anglo-Saxon. Findings from a Bronze Age burial chamber are in the British Museum in London. The "Hills and Holes" are ancient limestone quarries, abandoned and overgrown from 1500 AD, and now a National Nature Reserve.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.