Views of England, Wales and Scotland

Dove Cottage was formerly an inn called 'The Dove and Olive Bough'. The cottage was home to William and Dorothy Wordsworth from 1799 to 1808. It was here he wrote Michael, Resolution and Independence , Ode: Intimations of Immortality and completed The Prelude (1805). The daily life of the pot and his family is recorded in his sister Dorothy's famous Journals. There were many literary visitors to Dove Cottage including Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey, Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey. De Quincey described the cottage as "gleaming in the midst of trees, with a vast and seemingly never ending series of ascents rising above it".

Gracious stuccoed house for William, Duke of Clarence, by John Nash on the site of his old lodgings. It was finished in 1828. In 1830 William became King and, because Buckingham Palace was not finished he continued to live there. He tried St. James's Palace for a time, but found there was so little room that he and his Queen had to move all their books and letters out of the rooms before levees. So a passage to connect the palace with Clarence House was built. On King William's death in 1837 Princess Augusta, George III's daughter, took the house until her own death three years later.

Gracious stuccoed house for William, Duke of Clarence, by John Nash on the site of his old lodgings. It was finished in 1828. In 1830 William became King and, because Buckingham Palace was not finished he continued to live there. He tried St. James's Palace for a time, but found there was so little room that he and his Queen had to move all their books and letters out of the rooms before levees. So a passage to connect the palace with Clarence House was built. On King William's death in 1837 Princess Augusta, George III's daughter, took the house until her own death three years later.

The villa was built in 1735 - 9 to plans by the Earl of Burlington in the Palladian style which he introduced to London. Above the low ground floor there is a tall upper storey with a colonnaded portico reached by a double staircase at either side. The interior is by W. Kent. Features include the octagonal domed central hall and the gallery which has a frescoed ceiling and is in white and gold.

The little town of Ironbridge is set on steep limestone slopes above a narrow gorge through which the River Severn flows. Ironbridge has become famous because the first iron bridge was built here in 1779. It surely must be the most beautiful monument there is to the Industrial Revolution, which had its birth in the surrounding area. The bridge was designed by F. F. Pritchard and case in 1774 at Abraham Darby's foundry in Coalbrookdale

Stokesay Castle is one of the earliest fortified manor houses in England - the oldest parts of which date from the 12th century and the great hall from the 13th century. It is an extraordinary structure with its massive stone towers topped with a timber framed house - and of outstanding interest. The gatehouse itself is a fascinating architectural relic dating from the 16th century.

For ever associated with the great landscape painter John Constable and pictured in so many of his paintings, (particularly 'The Hay Wain'), the mill now belongs to the National Trust. Standing beside the River Stour with its wooden bridge, timbered houses and Willy Lott's white cottage, it presents a scene which has attracted innumerable artists since Constable first painted it in the beginning of the 19th century.

For ever associated with the great landscape painter John Constable and pictured in so many of his paintings, (particularly 'The Hay Wain'), the mill now belongs to the National Trust. Standing beside the River Stour with its wooden bridge, timbered houses and Willy Lott's white cottage, it presents a scene which has attracted innumerable artists since Constable first painted it in the beginning of the 19th century.

The most splendid surviving example of a Cistercian Monastery, and also the most beautifully sited. It bestrides a half mile reach of Skeldale, between the quarried face of Rye Bank and the well wooded south side of the river. Its founders were a handful of Benedictines determined to establish a more cultured way of life, discovering the site in 1132. Because clear water sprang from the sheltering rocks, they named their new abode, Fountains. A seven storey tower rising 170 feet dominates the site, the creation of Abbot Huby in the 15th century. At the Dissolution, Fountains was the richest Cistercian prize to fall to Henry VIII.

The Abbey was founded by Richard Graville in 1130. The wealth it acquired during the 13th century was used to build the present church (1280 - 1330). Described as "the fairest Abbey in Wales" by antiquary John Leland and dissolved in 1539; Neath was bought in the late 16th century by Sir John Herbert who converted the Abbot's house into a country mansion.

This 'picture postcard' castle stands at the meeting place of three lochs, Alsh, Duick and Long. Built by Alexander II of Scotland in 1220 on an island, this MacKenzie stronghold was bombarded and blown up by the English warship Worcester in 1719 when it was being used as a base for Jacobite rising. In 1932 the ruins was rebuilt by the MacRae family and is now open to the public as a clan museum and war memorial.