Archive

A Perthshire tower house open again after a decade of closure, Robert Adam's finest interiors in the Scottish Borders, the largest castle in Wales after an £8 million restoration, an Arts and Crafts house an hour from London, and a Surrey manor most people drive straight past.

Guided tours closing at Scampston Hall, Jacobite history at Braemar Castle, a forgotten Norman ruin in Herefordshire, and a Norfolk estate with a Walpole connection.

A Cumbrian fortress where Mary Queen of Scots began her captivity, a Roman fort now under new English Heritage management, and a timber-framed house hidden behind a West Sussex street. Plus Alnwick Castle's turn as Hogwarts, a personal tour led by the Petre family, and this week's curiosity about a small printshop with a surprising history.

An unfinished Victorian Gothic mansion in Gloucestershire where the bats have moved in, a 13th-century castle in Shropshire that survived the Civil War intact, and a Cecil Beaton photography exhibition inside one of Yorkshire's grandest houses. Plus a dragon-carved comb that's just come home to a Scottish abbey after centuries away.

After a week of hiding indoors, the heatwave breaks today. Time to get back outside, and this week's issue has plenty of reasons to do exactly that including: a medieval Leicestershire castle with a tunnel, a Parliamentarian story, and a Walter Scott connection; Churchill's paintings at Chartwell; a Victorian town in Shropshire that's still operating; and Waddesdon's art collection, one of the finest assembled in Victorian England.