Private tour · entry included
Holker Hall and Gardens —
a private afternoon
Falling water, ancient trees and a family that never sold
Private tour · entry included
Falling water, ancient trees and a family that never sold
Duration
3½ hourshalf day, afternoon
Gardens
23 acresformal and woodland
Collected
1:30pmfrom your hotel · back about 5pm
Entry
Includedhouse and gardens
Family home
Since 1756the Cavendishes
Where
Cartmelpeninsula, by Morecambe Bay
£459per group · entry included
Check availability & book Choose your date · your party only
Holker's twenty-three acres of garden run from clipped formal rooms beside the house into woodland that blazes with rhododendrons and azaleas in May and June. Water tumbles down a stone cascade, a lime tree planted four hundred years ago spreads its great folded trunk, and standing stones mark out a labyrinth in the long grass. Then the Cavendish family home, rebuilt after a fire in 1871 and filled with treasures from Chatsworth.
“We’re so glad we weren’t driving.” Our guests often tell us so.
The road to the Cartmel peninsula runs through gentle, quiet country towards the sea. Your driver watches the road; you watch the view.
Experienced, qualified drivers who know every lane and bend, in every kind of weather.
Entry is arranged before you arrive. Nothing to book, nothing to find.
Three families and two centuries of designers have shaped it, from an Edwardian redesign to a labyrinth laid out this century. It has never been left to stand still.
The cascade falls through ferns and trees, and in May and June the rhododendrons and azaleas turn the woodland into a blaze of colour.
The Great Holker Lime was planted in the early seventeenth century. Its trunk is nearly eight metres round, folded like a curtain. Stand beside it to understand.
Holker has passed by inheritance from the Prestons to the Lowthers to the Cavendishes, who have had it since 1756. It has never once been on the market.
Fire destroyed the west wing in 1871. The Cavendishes rebuilt it with confidence and filled it with paintings and furniture from Chatsworth.
Holker sits on the Cartmel peninsula between Morecambe Bay and the Leven estuary — a different, softer side of the Lake District.
A lime tree four hundred years old, water in the woods, and a house that rose again after the fire.Gardens first, history to follow
What there is to see, in the garden, the park and the house.
01
The cascade
Water in the woods
02
The Great Lime
Four hundred years
03
The Summer Garden
Through the beech arch
04
The labyrinth
Standing stones
05
The house
After the fire
Water runs down a long stone cascade through the woodland garden, between ferns and old trees, with rhododendrons framing the whole scene. On a warm day it is the coolest, calmest place in the garden.
Planted in the early seventeenth century, the Great Lime has a trunk nearly eight metres round, one of the largest of any lime in Britain, its bark folded and buttressed like a curtain. It does not look like much from a distance. Stand right beside it, and it takes your breath away.
Close to the house the garden divides into rooms, each with its own character: the Elliptical Garden with its clipped limes, the Sunken Garden with its pair of summer houses, and the Summer Garden, built where the tennis courts once were and entered through an arch of beech. In spring it fills with tulips. Every corner turns into another garden.
Beyond the formal rooms the garden opens into woodland, planted over generations with rhododendrons, azaleas and specimen trees. In May and June it is a blaze of pink, red, white and gold. If you can choose your month, choose this one.
Out in the park, tall standing stones rise from the long grass around a labyrinth path, laid out this century as one of the garden's newest additions. Walk it slowly, with the house above you through the trees. An old garden, still being added to.
Holker has passed by inheritance, never by sale, from the Prestons to the Lowthers to the Cavendishes, who have had it since 1756. In March 1871 fire destroyed the whole west wing. William Cavendish and his daughter Louisa rebuilt it, and filled the new rooms with paintings and furniture from Chatsworth, the family's great house in Derbyshire. Grand, and still very much a home.
If you like Holker, add another garden for the morning. Choose our private morning tour of Levens Hall, with the oldest topiary garden in the world, or of Sizergh Castle, with the largest limestone rock garden the National Trust owns.
For gardens in the north, on another day, our private tours to Dalemain in the morning and Hutton-in-the-Forest in the afternoon make a full day together.
Or make it part of a bespoke tour, tailor-made for your party.
This tour can be added to, or adapted as part of, a bespoke tour — tailor-made for each individual booking, around the places and the people you most want to see.
Find out about bespoke toursEvery tour is led by one of a small team of local guides — Tim, Gillian, Sandra and Steve — who live in Cumbria. The team rotates, so we can't promise a particular guide. We are based in Kendal; our minibuses are licensed for private hire, and we are fully insured.
This page was checked by Phil in .
Photographs via Geograph and Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0): Ruth Riddle, pam fray, Kenneth Allen, Oliver Dixon, Barbara Carr, Michael Garlick, Kevin Waterhouse; The wub (CC BY-SA 4.0). Placeholder photography — to be replaced with our own.
