National Trust places in the Cotswolds

The Cotswolds is England’s largest National Landscape, designated in 1966 and covering about 790 square miles of limestone hills from Bath to near Stratford-upon-Avon. Nine National Trust places sit inside or on the edge of its boundary, in two groups about 50 miles apart, so most people pick one end per day.

North Cotswolds

Hidcote, Snowshill Manor and Chastleton House are about 17 miles apart from first to last, near Chipping Campden and Moreton-in-Marsh. Two is an easy day, and three is possible if you start early. Hidcote is a garden of hedged outdoor rooms, Snowshill a manor house filled with Charles Wade’s collections, and Chastleton a Jacobean house kept much as the Trust found it. Upton House, on the north-eastern edge near Banbury, holds Lord Bearsted’s art collection in 1930s interiors.

Bath and the south

Newark Park, a Tudor hunting lodge, and Woodchester Park, a wooded valley around an unfinished Victorian mansion, sit on the escarpment above the Severn Vale near Stroud. Closer to Bath, Dyrham Park is about 7 miles north of the city, Prior Park’s landscape garden looks down on it from the south, and Little Solsbury Hill is an Iron Age hill fort above the Avon valley.

Before you go

Five of the nine are within four miles of a railway station. Moreton-in-Marsh and Honeybourne, on the Cotswold Line from London Paddington, serve the north, and Bath Spa serves the south. Little Solsbury Hill and Prior Park have no visitor car park, so walk up from the city or take a local bus. The gardens are at their best from late spring to early autumn, and several houses open fewer rooms or close for part of the winter, so check opening times before you travel.