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Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire is one of those country houses you find only in Britain. The attics are full of old toys, military headgear, unwanted commodes and a giant figure of the White Rabbit, left over from an Alice in Wonderland-themed event. A collection of Roman antiquities, some found on the estate, is displayed in the downstairs lavatory, along with a child’s pedal-operated aeroplane with patriotic RAF roundels. From the roof, you can see Lincoln cathedral on a good day. Built around 1600, Doddington has hardly been changed outside, and in half a millennium, it has never been sold.
Best of all are the tapestries. Due to the antiquarian tastes of its 18th-century owner John Hussey Delaval, the Georgian revamp was old-fashioned for the 1760s, and included bedrooms close-hung with tapestries in the manner of the William and Mary era. The Doddington tapestries are now a rare survival, although not perhaps for the reason that might be imagined. They are not of the first quality, but relatively workaday– and which is exactly the sort that have most commonly perished.
Clive and John are both enthralled by this house, which – thanks to the conversation of the stables to a shopping experience – is going through something of a golden age. It was where Clive first rode an electric bike.

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Clive and John have both been to Stansted Park, outside Chichester, though at different times. Clive remembers it from the time he helped the owner Eric Bessborough revise a book in the 1980s, whereas John’s connection is more recent. They both find it an astonishing example of an economic revival, apparently inspired by the Covid years when the public was desperate for open space. As a result, the house and park are beautifully maintained, while estate buildings have been well developed as a retail experience.
Stansted has a long and colourful history, which ushers a glittering array of characters onto the stage. Owners have ranged from kings to wine merchants, Dukes to the remarkable Lewis Way, who made it a seminary for converted Jews who were supposed to go out to the Holy Land and spread Christianity. This enterprise was not successful but the poet John Keats attended the dedication of the chapel, made from a fragment of a Tudor building. The main house was destroyed by fire in 1900 and rebuilt by a member of the Blomfield dynasty. In the 1920s it was bought by the 9th Earl of Bessborough, a Governor General of Canada, who furnished it with the contents of the family’s Irish country house, Bessborough House, in County Kilkenny, which had been removed before Bessborough was burnt during the Troubles. Today, Stansted still looks out over a well-treed landscape with avenues created during the Baroque period.
Few country houses have such a varied history or have been so happily revived. Clive and John are enchanted.

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John has been to Cambridge to see the castle, the mound of which still survives. Although a graduate of Peterhouse and now a Visiting Professor of Architecture, associated with the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at Downing College, Clive comes new to this early history but many stories of more recent times. Together the pair mull over the development of this remarkable city, famous for one of the most beautiful ensembles of buildings in England.
The castle reminds those who might have forgotten – or never knew – how important this fenland settlement was to William the Conqueror in the Norman period. Scholars arrived from Oxford in the 13th century, to establish what became the university. It rose to glory under the patronage of Henry VII, his mother Lady Margaret Beauford and his son Henry VIII. King’s College Chapel was finished in this era; Trinity College, St John’s College and Christ’s College were all founded. It is not only the buildings that give Cambridge its character but the open landscape of the Backs, one of the triumphs of the Picturesque.
Today Cambridge is a boom town, thanks to the knowledge economy associated with the university’s record in scientific and mathematical research. There has been rapid growth in housing, served by two new railway stations, Cambridge North and Cambridge South. Can the qualities for which Clive and John love the place survive the pressure?