Great Harewood House

Harewood House is one of the great treasure houses of England, sitting in the rolling countryside between Leeds and Harrogate in West Yorkshire. The house was built in the second half of the 18th century for the Lascelles family by the architect John Carr, with interiors created by Robert Adam and a celebrated suite of furniture commissioned from Thomas Chippendale, whose workshop lay just down the road in Otley.

Inside, visitors can wander through state rooms hung with paintings by Titian, El Greco, Turner and Reynolds, alongside Sèvres and Chinese porcelain collected by successive generations. The Yellow Drawing Room and Gallery showcase Adam's restrained neoclassical style, while the below-stairs rooms reveal the working life of a Georgian country estate. A rotating programme of contemporary art exhibitions sits alongside the historic collections.

The grounds were laid out by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown in the 1770s and include a lake, terraces with formal parterres, a walled garden, and the Himalayan Garden with its rhododendrons and Buddhist stupa. Children gravitate to the Farm Experience and adventure playground, while the Bird Garden is home to penguins, flamingos and other species. Harewood remains the family home of the Earl and Countess of Harewood.