Standing guard over Tewkesbury Abbey, this grand building of about 1500 provides a captivating base from which to explore the interesting town of Tewkesbury, the Cotswolds and Cheltenham.

Bush Cottage is a quintessential English cottage sat alone in amongst verdant rolling hills. With a front door framed in roses, it was built of timber felled in 1548.

This gatehouse is all that is left of Cawood Castle, once a stronghold of the Archbishops of York. It was here that Cardinal Wolsey was arrested for treason on King Henry VIII’s orders in 1530.

The College was possibly the first school in the country to be founded by a woman in 1506. With thick stone walls and an open fire, there are views across the fields and Dartmoor beyond.

Freston Tower is a six-storey Tudor folly that looks out over the River Orwell. There is a single room on each floor with the sitting room at the top to take advantage of the unrivalled views.

One of the few medieval church houses to survive, the Parish House was built in about 1500, with fine views from the windows of the main room of the 15th-century church.

From the time the Priest’s House was built around 1500, it played a central part in community life as both a village hall and local inn, hosting visitors and village feasts on saints’ days.

Beamsley Hospital is a circular almshouse encircling a chapel. Queen Elizabeth I gave consent for the foundation of Beamsley and it provided shelter for women until the late twentieth century.

Margells sits in Branscombe, a village that stretches down a picturesque valley towards the sea. The cottage, which we restored in 1976, is a fine example of a thatched 16th-century house.

An intriguing building with distinctive brick gable-end, unique in Norfolk. Its moulded timbers and late 16th-century wall paintings demonstrate the skill and care taken in its construction.

Shute Gatehouse was probably built for William Poole, who purchased the estate in about 1560. Enjoy fine views of the deer park and live under a ceiling of exceptional Jacobean plasterwork.

Warden Abbey is the last fragment of a once great abbey, founded in 1135, now stranded in quiet fields, of which the landscape speaks of past Cistercian wealth.

The Grammatica Britannica was written in this 16th-century manor house in 1593, making it the possible birthplace of the modern Welsh language.

This spectacular gatehouse was built in about 1580 in front of an older house. In 1586 Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned at Tixall. She was executed a month later.

Wolveton Gatehouse was completed during the reign of Henry VIII and was the gatehouse of probably one of Dorset’s finest medieval houses, the Elizabethan part of which is still a family home.