Ickworth, Wimpole show off East Anglia's country house glories

Had life taken just a few turns differently, I might have settled in East Anglia.

My first tentative steps into English life, rather than tourism, happened there. My American employer had a subsidiary in Cambridge, and I managed to plead my way into two week-long assignments there following British holidays in the early '90s. Had they, rather than the London HQ, had longer-term roles, I would have happily started my expat life there. At about the same time I was getting to know my first British office, the man who would become my husband had inherited a quarter share of a farm in Norfolk. Reality called him to London as well, and the family sold up, though a drive by the old place this past weekend did trigger fantasies of me, freelancing after a career of tech marketing in Cambridge, married to a blackcurrant farmer and producing my line of boutique prosciutto from heritage-breed pigs. It could have happened...

Instead, this area is mostly a vivid memory imprinted by the typical, high-intensity explorer mode of my youth. I packed more tourism into the four weekends and 10 weeknights around those Cambridge business trips than most people do in years. What I found was quite possibly England's most densely-packed region for country houses, cathedrals and charming villages. While residents of the Cotswolds, Dartmoor or the Lake District might sneer at the flat landscape, the fens have a moody charm and there are some lovely beaches.

And yet, aside from one girls' trip in 2010, I've hardly set foot in the region since moving to England permanently in '99. This is primarily because of how inaccessible it is, thanks to Britain's overstretched transport networks. Though it's only 120 miles from our house to Cambridge, that will take you about four and a half hours if you hit the typical jams on the M4, 25 and 11. (Three on the rare traffic-free run.) Trains are expensive, uncomfortable and demand the hassle of a cross-London transfer. A journey requires a good excuse. And now we have one. A dear friend is about to "marry in" to the county, so we headed to her new village of Great Hockham for a long weekend.

The sightseeing options from here are vast. Bury St. Edmunds ... home and site of the martyrdom of England's original patron saint ... has an atmospheric town centre, a romantic ruined abbey and a modern sculpture trail commemorating Edmund's story. Newmarket is the home of British horse racing. Cambridge, of course, has all the dreaming spires, culture, punting and architecture of Oxford, but is slightly less overrun by tourism. Cromer, the nearest beach town, is famous for its crabs. Duxford offers one of the world's best aerospace museums, which I wrote about here.

On this visit, and having barely used my National Trust membership this year, I opted for countryhouses: Ickworth on the way up, Wimpole Hall on the way back. Both are spectacular examples of late Georgian/Regency style and, I wager, would be far better known if they were easier to get to. Distance does. however, have its advantages. Neither were particularly crowded, even on a weekend at the heart of school summer holidays.

Ickworth is unique for its enormous central rotunda. Intended as an impressive space for entertaining and showing off collections, it was designed by an imported Italian architect and is clearly meant to channel monumental ancient architecture with its ascending orders of columns and Parthenon-style external friezes. The result is a bit ungainly. Out of proportion with the wings on either side of it, the rotunda looks more like a museum or civic building than a gracious country house. But its sheer quirkiness makes it worth a wander.

The entry hall is particularly magnificent, soaring up the full height of the building beneath the dome, the space broken by a series of landings and fly-overs. Not only decorative, the landings along the upper stories are all lined with bookshelves, making the space a rather magnificent multi-story library.  The thing I remembered most from a visit here 20 years ago, however, was the Pompeii room. It's still just as striking, though two more decades of European tourism have given me the perspective to find it just a bit less unique than I thought it was, and in far worse repair than I remembered. Still, it's one of the earliest examples of the fad for copying what archeologists were digging up beneath Vesuvius, and it's gorgeous. I had not remembered the extensive collection of family silver, which is one of the best held by the National Trust.  One of the most amusing things about Ickworth, however, is simply checking out how its decorators worked with the challenge of curved outer walls. In some spaces, like the dining room, it throws proportion off and seems decidedly odd. But it enhances the drawing room to make it a dramatic spectacle.

Most of Ickworth came together during the Regency, that brief but critical inflection point between the Georgians and the Victorians. I adore this style. You have all the scholarly classicism of the Georgians, but it's tempered with a sense of humour and fun. And while it anticipates the lavish use of fabrics and pattern, and random mix of historic styles so beloved of the Victorians, it does it with a much lighter, airier touch. Wimpole Hall is an even better example.

The most memorable interiors here are the work of Sir John Soane, who went on to be one of the go-to architects of the early Victorian age and is now remembered best for his Bank of England building (based on a grand Roman baths complex) and his house-turned-museum. There's a marvellous story of how the owner of Wimpole, while on his Grand Tour, noticed an Englishman obsessively measuring the ruins at Paestum. It was Soane. When it came time for home remodelling a few years later, that sort of attention to detail meant Soane got the call.

Though this is early work, his obsession with domes and arches ... and mixing them up in interesting ways to bring light into a room through innovative sources ... was already in full flow. He created one of my favourite libraries in England here, with a light-filled ante-room under a series of arches, classical motifs in plaster picked out with grey-and-white delicacy. The house is most famous for his T-shaped, yellow drawing room, the odd angles and tall dome of which demanded the destruction of seven rooms to squeeze it into the framework of the old house.

My favourite, however, is his Roman-inspired indoor swimming pool. Visitors came down a circular stair from the bedroom level to enter a small room with a fireplace, towel racks and arched alcoves. From there, two arches open on curved stairs that sweep down, meeting in the middle on a wooden deck surrounding a deep pool. Not big enough for swimming laps, but eight or 10 people could happily take a dip here at once without crowding. Don't forget to shower before entering the pool! It's a Soane-designed piece of furniture: step inside the four wooden columns and beneath the round water tank (mahogany decorated with classical motifs) and pull the chain; water will drain through a lead grill to a pan beneath your feet. I wonder what Victoria and Albert made of it on their visit here. Evidently Soane designed a number of these, but this is the only one left.

Wimpole is more than Soane, however. In the best English country house tradition it shows off layers of design from different eras. The exterior and formal staircase, encrusted with decorative plasterwork on broad cornices, is Carolingian. There's a rare Baroque painted chapel by Thornhill that looks more suited to Hampton Court Palace than a Cambridgeshire country seat. Victorian tiles in ancient Roman style welcome visitors with a big "Salve" laid into the floor.

We can thank Elsie Bambridge for our ability to see any of this. Rudyard Kipling's daughter, and only surviving child, lived here from 1938 to her death in 1976, using royalties from her father's books to restore what was then a crumbling pile. Think of this as the house The Jungle Book built. Bedrooms and several sitting rooms appear as she left them when the place went to the National Trust, capturing the lovely pastiche English country house style of the late 20th century.

Outside there are walks through classic parkland, a dramatic ruined castle (actually a folly built from scratch) to catch the eye, an impressive stable block with cafe and shop, a separate restaurant in the service wing, the parish church and an enormous Victorian walled garden fully restored to grow fruit, vegetables and flowers. The old home farm buildings have been transformed to a model farm and petting zoo for kids; I didn't get that far but the flow of happy children walking back from that direction suggests it's probably a bigger draw than Soanian architecture.

Wimpole and Ickworth are just the tip of the country house iceberg in East Anglia. My introductory blitz in the early '90s gives me fond memories of the Baroque glories of Houghton, the Tudor ghost that is Anne Boleyn's childhood home of Blickling and the fanciful Jacobean skyline of Felbrigg. Holkham, the only house in the county I've visited and written about since starting this blog, is perhaps my favourite house in the country and has the added benefit of one of England's best beaches.

Yes, it's a pain in to get here from Hampshire. But I think I'm very happy that I have friends with a guest room in the region. It's time to get to know it again.