Seven hundred years of the Strickland family. The finest Elizabethan carved interiors in the north of England.
This is a private morning guided tour of Sizergh Castle — exclusively for your group of up to seven guests — departing at 9:30am. You visit the castle, home of the Strickland family since 1239, with its Elizabethan interiors, with house entry included and the expert storyteller’s full attention on your group alone. £459 per group, with free cancellation up to 24 hours before the tour.
Sizergh Castle has been the home of the Strickland family since 1239 — a continuous occupation of almost eight hundred years on the same estate, in the same landscape, south of Kendal. The peel tower at its core was built in the 14th century as a defensive refuge from Scottish raids. The Elizabethan extensions added in the 16th century contain some of the finest inlaid oak panelling and carved overmantels in England — much of it removed to the Victoria and Albert Museum in the 1890s and later returned.
This is a house in which history did not stop and start but continued. The Strickland family remained Catholic through the Reformation, followed James II into French exile after 1688, and maintained the estate through three centuries of political and religious disadvantage. The story your expert storyteller tells at Sizergh is a story of unusual continuity — and of what it costs to maintain it.
The finest room in the house — Elizabethan inlaid oak panelling of exceptional quality, partly original and partly restored after the V&A episode of the 1890s. The overmantel is considered one of the best surviving examples of its period.
The 14th-century defensive tower at the castle's core — the oldest part of the building and the most direct connection to the medieval Cumbria of Scottish raids and border insecurity.
The National Trust garden at Sizergh includes one of the finest rock gardens in the country, created in the 1920s and now maintained as an important collection of hardy ferns and alpine plants.
Collection from your chosen station.
Arrival at Sizergh, three miles south of Kendal. Your expert storyteller introduces the Strickland family and the eight-century history of the estate.
The peel tower, the Elizabethan Great Hall, the Inlaid Chamber and the sequence of family rooms — the Strickland portraits, the Jacobite connections, the Catholic recusancy.
The rock garden, the walled garden and the views across the limestone country toward the Lake District fells.
Depart Sizergh, arriving back by approximately 1:00pm.