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| The approach to some historic mansions is dignified, even imposing, with lodges and gravel drives or avenues of oaks and limes. Harvington is more casual. You reach it up a narrow lane from the village pub, twisting past cottages and houses, a field full of sheep and an ancient quarry, now used for parking tractors. There is a laurel hedge and glimpses of a sheet of water. Then suddenly you emerge into an open space with a church and stables at the far side. Before you, across a lawn, is a great pile of red-brick chimneys and gables, rising from a moat overhung by trees. | To the left is the main Elizabethan building; to the right the North Tower, also originally Elizabethan but reconstructed about 1756 with Georgian staircase and windows. Between them is the low central part, with the gateway and a single tall chimney. The lawn is more or less on the site of the Elizabethan Bowling Green. On the far side of the island are two other buildings: a camouflaged Catholic chapel of 1743 and the Elizabethan Malt House, which has recently been restored and adapted as a visitor centre, with an exhibition of life on the estate. |
For information about opening times, entrance fees and how to get to the Hall, please go to the VISITING page.
