Inside England’s Greatest Estates: Three Historic Houses, Three Remarkable Stories
Most historic houses in England welcome visitors at arm’s length: curated rooms, guided routes, carefully managed access. But on this HX Luxe Itinerary: England’s Abbeys, Halls and Castles, you’ll experience something entirely different.
The Duke of Rutland himself will unlock Belvoir Castle’s archives - nine centuries of family history rarely seen. Lord and Lady Edward Manners will host you for lunch in their medieval hall before revealing rooms that have witnessed almost one thousand years of English life. And at Combermere Abbey, Sarah Callander Beckett will share decades of sensitive restoration over lunch.
Here are the stories of three houses - and the people who bring them to life on this very special trip with HeritageXplore Luxe.
Belvoir Castle: Archives of Power
At Belvoir Castle, history isn’t locked away in climate-controlled vaults. Well, it is - but the Duke of Rutland himself will unlock those doors for you.
The Duke is currently midway through an ambitious ten-year project to digitise the castle’s extraordinary archives, and he’ll personally illuminate this monumental effort with a behind-the-scenes tour. What you’ll encounter isn’t simply paper, but a living chronicle of a family at the nerve centre of English political life for nine hundred years. The earliest charters date to the early 12th century; from there unfolds an unbroken record captured in cartularies and title deeds, household accounts and estate ledgers, maps of ancestral lands, and letters exchanged with monarchs and ministers.
The historical wealth of these holdings earned four volumes from the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts - testament to a collection that traces Britain’s transformation from medieval feudalism to the modern age. Today, five rooms of archives are carefully conserved with specialist climate control, ensuring that handwriting, seals, and marginalia remain as vivid as when they were first set down.
These documents don’t merely preserve history - they actively shape it. Among recent discoveries: plans by Capability Brown, long thought lost, that have since guided the restoration of Belvoir’s sweeping parkland.
And just as the archives speak to continuity, so too does life within the castle walls. Over two nights, you’ll be welcomed not as a visitor but as a house guest of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. Evenings unfold with black-tie dinners in the State Dining Room, conversations by candlelight, and perhaps a late game of snooker in the billiard room. Hospitality here isn’t performance - it’s tradition, refined over centuries and extended to you.
Haddon Hall: Where Medieval England Endures
Simon Jenkins once called Haddon Hall “the most perfect house to survive from the Middle Ages,” and that isn’t hyperbole.
This is that rarest of survivors - a medieval manor that time forgot. It slumbered for nearly two hundred years, from the early 1700s until its restoration in 1912. In that long sleep, its soul remained remarkably intact: mullioned windows, oak panelling, medieval kitchens still blackened by centuries of use.
When the Manners family finally returned in the early twentieth century, the 9th Duke of Rutland oversaw a gentle restoration that preserved rather than reinvented. What emerged was a place where history feels close enough to touch.
Lord and Lady Edward Manners, whose family have held Haddon since a 12th-century marriage first brought it to the Vernons, will welcome you for lunch before leading you through the house’s storied rooms. In the chapel, fifteenth-century frescoes - hidden for centuries beneath whitewash - glow once again beside a carved alabaster altarpiece. The Great Hall’s vast medieval hearth still burns beneath the original timber roof; flagstones are polished smooth by six centuries of passage. The Parlour dazzles with painted Tudor roses and heraldic panels, while the Long Gallery stretches along the upper floor like a bridge between eras.
As afternoon fades, you’ll leave through the great courtyard arch and continue to The Peacock at Rowsley, where supper and a night’s rest await - time to let the day’s impressions settle before your journey continues.
Combermere Abbey: Nine Centuries of Stone and Spirit
Founded in 1133 by Hugh de Malbank, Lord of Nantwich, Combermere Abbey began as a Cistercian monastery. It has since survived the Dissolution, civil war, decay, and revival. What makes it remarkable today is how clearly those nine centuries remain etched into its character - each era leaving its own quiet mark.
Your host, Sarah Callander Beckett, has spent over thirty years restoring the Abbey’s fragile fabric - a labour of love that has saved its medieval core and revived its Gothic spirit. Over lunch in one of the Abbey’s private rooms, she’ll guide you through its layered history: from the medieval cloisters that still shape the house’s foundations, to the Tudor remodelling by Sir George Cotton after the Dissolution, and the 19th-century transformation by Sir Stapleton Cotton, military hero and confidant of the Duke of Wellington.
Afterwards, you’ll wander through William Emes’ sweeping parkland beside the mere, taking in landscape design that predates Capability Brown’s fame - a harmonious composition of water, woodland, and open vista that has graced these grounds for over two centuries.
Three houses. Three families. Nine centuries of English history - alive in the hands of those who tend it. This is what sets luxury castle tours apart: history as hospitality, architecture as conversation, and heritage as a living, breathing thing.
Join us in April 2026 for our England’s Abbeys, Halls & Castles private tour - where the doors open just for you. Enquire here.
