At Home at Weston Park - Country Houses of Shropshire

The coach leaves Stafford Railway Station at 1.45pm. Weston Park, in its current form, dates from 1671, with 18th-century alterations and further works throughout the 19th century. Its beautifully decorated interiors contain a collection of 30,000 indigenous items, ranging from portraits by van Dyck, Gainsborough and Reynolds to silver, porcelain and furniture by Morel & Hughes, Gillow and Chippendale. Welcome tea, and an orientational tour.

Built for wool merchant Laurence de Ludlow in the late 13th century, Stokesay Castle marks the turning point from fortified castle to country house. The Lodge is the late 18th-century home of the Salwey family – a classical house that enjoys a Picturesque setting which is said to have been the inspiration of Milton’s Comus. Acton Scott Hall was one of the earliest of double-plan houses – Elizabethan and yet with 19th-century alterations for Mrs Stackhouse Acton, its antiquarian author owner, whose descendants still live here.

The great neoclassical Attingham Park was designed by George Steuart for the 1st Lord Berwick. John Nash added the picture gallery – the very first to be lit with cast iron framed top-lighting – while the park follows designs illustrated by Humphry Repton in his 1797 Red Book. Longner Hall also employed Nash and Repton, yet here the result is a startling Tudor Gothic house of compact plan. Timber framed Pitchford Hall dates from the 15th century. It was well restored in the late 19th century and welcomed the young Princess (later Queen) Victoria.

This morning there is a guided tour of the gardens at Weston Park, which represent the combined efforts of ‘Capability’ Brown, John Webb, William Brodrick Thomas, and, more recently, rosarian Michael Marriot who recreated the rose garden with stock from nearby David Austin Roses. Acton Round Hall is a handsome baroque house, attributed to the Smith family. Return to Weston Park for some free time.

Millichope stands in the Corvedale and was designed by the Shrewsbury architect Edward Haycock in collaboration with its owner, the Rev. Robert Norgrave Pemberton. The house was restored by the present owners. Stop in Ludlow, one of the most architecturally satisfying of all English market towns, before a visit to Oakly Park. Purchased by Robert Clive ‘of India’ in 1771, the house was rebuilt by his grandson with the architect C.R.Cockerell. It now presents a remarkable series of archaeologically-influenced interiors.

Willey Park is the masterpiece of its architect, Lewis Wyatt, and has strong architectural echoes of Carlton House, the lost London residence of George IV as Prince of Wales. Willey was built on the proceeds of the Industrial Revolution and yet its vast landscape park speaks only of arcadian delights. Hatton Grange was also a house with links to the distant industrial interests of the Slaney family and its architect, Thomas Farnolls Pritchard is also known for his hand in the design of Abraham Darby III’s cast Iron Bridge. The house is well documented from designs in Pritchard’s drawing book (American Institute of Architects). The tour ends at Stafford Railway Station at c. 4.00pm.