National Trust properties from the 2003 Guide

At the heart of this riverside estate the house at Cotehele was mainly built between 1485 and 1627 and was a home of the Edgcumbe family for centuries. Its granite and slatestone walls contain intimate chambers adorned with tapestries, original furniture and armour. Outside, the formal gardens overlook the richly planted valley garden below, with medieval dovecote, stewpond and Victorian summer house, and 18th-century tower above. At the Quay there are interesting old buildings housing an art and craft gallery and an outstation of the National Maritime Museum. The restored Tamar sailing barge Shamrock is moored alongside. A network of footpaths throughout the estate provides a variety of riverside and woodland walks with a high nature conservation and industrial archaeology interest.

Coughton Court, the Throckmorton family home since 1409, is one of England’s finest Tudor houses, located within 47 acres of beautiful Warwickshire countryside. The house has a fine collection of furniture, porcelain and family portraits. Within the varied grounds is a 0.6ha (11.2-acre) walled garden containing stunning displays of roses and herbaceous plants. There are two churches to visit and a fascinating exhibition on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which has family connections.

Chastleton House is one of England’s finest and most complete Jacobean houses. It is filled not only with a mixture of rare and everyday objects, furniture and textiles collected since its completion in 1612, but also with the atmosphere of 400 years of continuous occupation by one family. The gardens have a typical Elizabethan and Jacobean layout with a ring of fascinating topiary at their heart and it was here in 1865 that the rules of modern croquet were codified. Since acquiring the property, the Trust has concentrated on conserving it rather than restoring it to a pristine state.

Woodchester Park lies in a beautiful secluded valley near Stroud, in the Cotswolds. The valley contains the remains of an 18th- and 19th-century landscape park, a chain of five lakes, fringed by woodland pasture and an unfinished Victorian mansion, which is open to the public on specified days from Easter to October. There are also waymarked trails (steep and strenuous in places) through delightful scenery.

The home of the Dryden family since its construction, the Elizabethan manor house of Canon’s Ashby has survived more or less unaltered since c.1710. The intimate and atmospheric interior contains wall paintings and Jacobean plasterwork of the highest quality. There are also a formal garden, an orchard featuring varieties of fruit trees from the 16th century and a surprisingly grand church – all that remains of the Augustinian priory from which the house takes its name.