Wimpole Hall

Wimpole Hall is Cambridgeshire's grandest and most spectacular country house, set within the largest historic parkland in the county — 3,000 acres of designed landscape created by some of the greatest names in English garden history. The house and its estate represent one of the finest survivals of the classic English country house tradition anywhere in the nation.

The house grew from a modest early 17th-century building into a vast country mansion through the hands of successive wealthy owners, most notably the Earls of Hardwicke, who employed the leading architects and designers of each generation. James Gibbs designed the baroque chapel (1719), a masterpiece of English church architecture with its painted ceiling and original furnishings. Henry Flitcroft added significant extensions, and Sir John Soane — architect of the Bank of England — contributed his famous Yellow Drawing Room and Book Room in the 1790s, two of the finest late 18th-century domestic interiors in England.

The landscape park was laid out in three great phases by Charles Bridgeman (1720s), then comprehensively redesigned by Capability Brown (1767–1772), and finally refined by Humphry Repton (1801). The result is a landscape of rare historical depth: vast open lawns, ancient avenue trees, a Gothic folly (the tower), a Chinese bridge and a lake, all within views of extraordinary beauty that capture the English pastoral ideal at its most refined.

Wimpole Home Farm, also managed by the National Trust and included in the standard admission, is one of England's premier rare breeds centres. The handsome farm buildings designed by Sir John Soane house cattle, sheep, pigs, horses and chickens of rare and traditional breeds, and the working farm demonstrates agricultural practices in their historic context.

Wimpole came to the National Trust in 1976 as a gift from Elsie Bambridge, daughter of Rudyard Kipling, and represents one of the most complete country house, garden and estate ensembles in National Trust care.