Great Private Houses in Norfolk - Special arrangements and in-depth visits

You choose whether to join the tour at Congham Hall Hotel at 1.30pm or King’s Lynn railway station at 2.00pm. The Dutch gables of Raynham Hall show that it dates to the 1620s, though it was an early adopter of Italian Renaissance features. A hundred years later Viscount Townshend commissioned William Kent to refurbish and extend the house, and the sumptuous interiors are among his finest. Raynham Hall has strong historical links with the USA.

With Holkham Hall the English country house reached a peak of perfection, the serene geometry of the Palladian edifice contrasting with the ‘natural’ layout of the deer park, the chaste exterior belying the staggering richness of the interiors and the artworks. The client was the Earl of Leicester, the architect William Kent. The house is closed to the public today and access includes hidden passages, back stairs and servants’ quarters, and there is a tour of the grounds by trailer.

Ryston Hall was built 1669–72 to the design of Sir Roger Pratt, among the first of the amateur patron architects so well represented in Norfolk. Subsequent alterations by John Soane, 1787–1788, and to a lesser extent by Anthony Salvin. The house remains in the Pratt family ownership and its collections survive as a classic example of an English family continuum. Wolterton Hall was built in the 1720s for Horatio Walpole, Sir Robert’s brother. Neo-Palladian in style, it is the best work of architect Thomas Ripley. The story of its restoration by the current owners is fascinating. The tour is followed by drinks.

The grandest monument of English Palladianism, Houghton Hall was built for Sir Robert Walpole, masterly statesman and first – and longest-serving – prime minister. Construction began in 1722, and several of the leading architects of the time contributed to its design, including James Gibbs, Colen Campbell, William Kent and Thomas Ripley. Though Sir Robert’s picture collection was sold to the Russian imperial family in 1779, the house remains filled with art. Spectacular walled garden, extensive park, exhibition of contemporary sculpture. Sheringham Hall was built for Abbot Upcher between 1813 and 1819 and survives today very much as it was planned. It may be regarded as Humphry Repton’s ideal of a country house: a combination of the neo-classical and the romantic.

Situated in the centre of King’s Lynn, Clifton is probably the finest surviving merchant’s town house in England. As well as Tudor, Stuart and Georgian interiors, a magnificent staircase and the largest domestic medieval tiled pavement, there is an Elizabethan tower with spectacular views. A light lunch here before the coach takes you to King’s Lynn railway station by 2.30pm and on to the hotel.