More from Milton Keynes: Art, architecture, history and drama are all a short drive away

It was hard to come back down to earth after that vibrant, high-intensity girls’ trip to Naples … especially when I was returning to the gloom of England’s wettest spring on record. Bits of my lawn still feel like I’m treading on a wet sponge, the slugs and snails are abundant, and half of my much-prized Japanese maple drowned, making what was once a perfect umbrella into a lopsided cascade. But life must go on, and holidays are only remarkable because they’re a counterpoint to the real world. 

Admittedly, my real world is a fairly remarkable one.

Even though it’s been almost 30 years since I first entered England on a work permit, and I’ve been a citizen for 18 of those, I still get a regular thrill of wonder that I live here. I used to work for years at a time to earn the money, and save up the vacation time, to assemble 12 precious days in England. Now I have an English garden out my back door, work in a Tudor Manor House and walk my dog in the ruins of a Roman city. Even the mundane is extraordinary when you live in a place with so many layers of history.

Which brings me back to much-maligned Milton Keynes. I wrote earlier in the year about how this town delivers far above its reputation. I recently spent another week in residence there; it’s my husband’s home base for the working week these days and I join him when I can. With no work or meetings in the diary last week, I devoted myself to getting the most out of my National Trust (NT) and Historic Houses Association (HHA) memberships, continuing to explore the wealth of historic sites within an easy drive of this new town. Here’s the roundup.

SULGRAVE MANOR (HHA)
If it weren’t for its American associations, Sulgrave would have little to recommend it as a tourist attraction. It is a modest place … more an enhanced farmhouse than a manor … with no original furnishings. The gardens are pleasant but not memorable. The surrounding village is small but unremarkable, and feels particularly isolated at the moment as an island in the sea of construction for the HS2 rail project. What makes this place special, of course, is that it was once owned by a family named Washington, and one of their descendants ended up doing quite well for himself in the New World.

At the turn of the 20th century a group of philanthropists on both sides of The Pond decided to buy the place, which was then near-derelict, and turn it into a centre celebrating Anglo-American ties. World War I slowed them down but they were able to open by the 1930s and the house, administered by a charitable trust, has been celebrating the Special Relationship and teaching visitors about George Washington ever since. 

There’s a small museum in a building in the service yard that will offer little new to Americans, but was popular with all the Brits I spoke to and is clearly an excellent teaching resource. In fact, there are kid-friendly displays throughout the house that make this an excellent spot to explore with younger people to learn not just about Washington and the United States, but about wider topics in 18th century history. The star site inside the museum is one of Washington’s black velvet frock coats, which is not only a lovely touch of authenticity but gives you a clear sense of what a commanding figure he must have been. Inside, curators have done an excellent job assembling interiors to give visitors a sense of what the place would have been like when the Washingtons were in residence in the 17th and early 18th centuries. It’s worth arranging your visit to catch the introductory talk that volunteers give in the main hall hourly, but the best thing in the house is upstairs. In 1995 volunteers in the U.S. and the UK worked together to create a new set of embroidered hangings in for the bed in the great chamber. They are spectacular. Flora, fauna, people and buildings combine to illustrate country life and visions of America in the Elizabethan period. There is even a turkey. The kitchen and the formal drawing room are both attractive, and the gardens are worth a stroll, but it’s the bed you’ll remember.

ASCOTT (NT)
The Rothschild banking family has had a long association with this part of the Midlands, most famously at palatial Waddesdon Manor. Ascott (top photo) is less than 20 miles away from that blockbuster, but it feels much further when it comes to scale, style and awareness. Like Sulgrave, Ascott started life as an enhanced farmhouse, but the Rothschilds expanded on an epic scale. In the late 19th century they turned this into a hunting retreat, mostly used for weekend house parties. It has the profusion of gables, leaded windows, decorative detail and clipped topiary that comprised the Victorian fantasy of “Merrie Olde England”, and reminds me a lot of what the Astor family did at about the same time down at Hever. 

The Ascott you see today, however, is more a product of the inter-war years. The Rothschilds of that era were still rich, but nobody could afford vast staffs of domestic servants any more, and they wanted a quiet family home rather than a party palace. So they tore down a big chunk of the earlier building and re-decorated to suit their needs. It was a triumphant marriage of wealth and good taste. You only get to see five rooms, a long hallway and a museum room for their porcelain and china collection, but every painting, piece of furniture and decorative detail is perfect. I was particularly taken with the dining room, where they wanted to tile the walls with 17th century Dutch ceramics to match the art they would hang there, but there weren’t enough in existence. So craftspeople pressed lines into the plaster to mimic tiles and painted such accurate versions that you would swear you’re looking at the real thing. There’s a comfortable yet spectacular sitting room that doubles as a gallery to show off a collection of antique Chinese pottery that I suspect the Chinese government would pay a fortune to get back. The library makes you ache to grab a book and sprawl on its over-stuffed, down-filled cushions while surrounded by Old Master canvases. 

You’re not allowed to take any photos inside the house ... I've borrowed one off the web ... because it’s still very much a family home, given to the National Trust with strict provisos about the family remaining in control. Thus Ascott has more of a feel of a Historic Houses Association property: more intimate, alive and human. This is also why the gardens here are so exciting. The family has continued to add to them over the years, enhancing the original Gertrude Jekyll design (including a sumptuous long border ablaze with purple on my visit), with an Italianate sunken garden from Arabella Lennox-Boyd in the 1990s, modern sculpture injected sensitively throughout, and a new, landscape-based design by Jacques and Peter Wirtz. The grassy mounds, swirling paths of water and groupings of trees might not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s exciting to see a garden like this evolving rather than re-creating its original design year after year.  

Because Ascott is a family home its hours are more restricted than the usual NT properties and there are limited spaces to get inside. It’s a good idea to book in advance.

COTTESBROOKE (HHA)
Though its Queen Anne architecture presents a radically different face to the world than Ascott’s homely half timbering, the feel of the interiors of the two houses is remarkably similar. I suspect this is because, once again, we’re looking at a place that was heavily remodelled in the 1930s, and both homes share a legacy of being hunting retreats. Where Ascott is south of Milton Keynes, in Buckinghamshire, Cottesbrooke is northwest of the town, in Northamptonshire. This is a county so famous for its hunts that Sisi, the beloved and very sporty empress of Austria, used to travel here and stay at this house to enjoy the rural pastime. Like Ascott, it also remains a family home, though here in the completely private hands of the MacDonald-Buchanan family so opening times are much more limited and you only get in on escorted tours, during which photos are not allowed.

It is, however, very much worth making the effort to get inside … particularly if you like dogs and horses. The family owns and proudly displays one of the world’s finest collections of English sporting art. We’re talking lots of race horses, scenes of hunt meets, hunters gliding over obstacles, packs of hunting dogs and the occasional stately stag. These are displayed throughout what is very much still a family home, albeit a particularly grand one. The most surprising interior is perhaps the curving arm that comes off the main block to one of the service wings and must be one of the most beautiful hallways in the country. It serves as both an art gallery for paintings, antiques and china, and as a viewing platform for the wonderful gardens. It also gets people from point A to B. The guides are excellent, mixing anecdotes of family history with nudges towards the most noteworthy stuff in each room. Queen Anne is a perennial favourite as I browse Country Life property advertisements dreaming of enormous lottery wins. The gracious proportions and effortless elegance of this house, both inside and out, validate my choice.

I suspect most visitors come here, however, more for the gardens than the interiors. They are indeed luscious, in a traditional, dripping-with-blossom, garden rooms kind of way that is everything you want out of a traditional English patch. My problem, unfortunately, was that it was absolutely lashing down with rain. Puddles were so deep and grass so sodden your trouser legs were soaked after a short stroll. I saw a bit, but will need to return to explore the gardens on a day better suited for it.

LAMPORT HALL (HHA)
Lamport is so close to Cottesbrooke … barely 10 minutes by car … that any HHA member would be foolish not to do both in the same day if in the area. (They are both roughly an hour from Milton Keynes and practically suburban to Northampton.) I didn’t know much about Lamport but I had high expectations of its gardens, given that the most famous thing about the place is that its Victorian owner was credited with introducing the garden gnome to England. He had a famous rockery and imported the figurines from Germany to place in little scenes to add a fairy-tale aspect to this part of the garden. The guides even suggest that these horticultural vignettes inspired Walt Disney’s treatment of the dwarves in Snow White. It’s not entirely far-fetched, since Gyles Isham, who grew up in the house and would go on to be the last baronet of the family to live there before setting it up in trust for the public, worked as an actor in Hollywood at the same time Disney was developing the film.

Sadly, there’s no evidence of those historic gnomes today and the rockery has just been renovated and completely re-planted. It will look great in a few years but is a bit stark at the moment. There’s an enormous walled garden used for growing cutting flowers that was about two weeks off bursting into magnificent bloom. A bed in front of the house with a strikingly modern planting of massed alliums and wildflowers testifies to the fact that the managing trust is investing in new ideas as well as maintaining the large and stately traditional gardens. But the same rains that would torment me later at Cottesbrooke were sweeping down at Lamport, so it wasn’t a day for lingering outside.

Instead, I loitered in a beautiful house with layers of history and enthusiastic tour guides to explain it. There’s an array of styles here, from a lofty, almost-Baroque music room to an elegant, austere Regency dining room. Another room just off the main staircase is a festival of traditional panelling and woodcarving that feels as if Charles I might walk in at any moment. (A copy of one of his enormous portraits by Van Dyck hangs next to the stair.) It’s a curious place, in that it doesn’t really hang together as a house. It’s more as if you’ve wandered into a museum where each room is set up to show you a different time in history. But there’s plenty to look at and, as a volunteer at another HHA house, I was particularly impressed with all of the small touches that brought the place to life: thoughtful use of language on labels, contests to encourage visitors to tag them on social media, a room playing videos of Gyles’ films, costumes to try on, etc. I was particularly amused by the story of the Georgian-era baronet who went off on his grand tour and refused to come home for years, despite begging letters from his mother whose portrait hangs in the entry hall. Instead, the poor woman was left to run the estate and take delivery of all the goodies he sent back, including a pair of outrageously over-the-top Neapolitan cabinets that are so big they have their own room to display effectively. He nearly bankrupted the family. Luckily, a few savvy marriages soon-after refilled the coffers.

If you are doing both Lamport and Cottesbrooke, opening hours mean you’ll be hitting Lamport first. Take your lunch break at the Lamport Swan, on the A508 just past the estate’s entrance. It’s a top-notch gastropub with comfortable interiors, an attentive staff, excellent burgers, and a large bar area that welcomes dogs.

ELY CATHEDRAL
At an hour and a half’s drive, with no simple, direct route and multiple encounters with HS2 construction traffic, I can’t credibly say that the cathedral town of Ely is local to Milton Keynes. But it’s a heck of a lot closer from there than it is from my home in Hampshire. Whatever the distance, it’s a blockbuster that deserves the effort. Unless you are particularly keen on gothic architecture, English cathedrals can merge

into one undifferentiated memory of long aisles, pointy arches, fan vaulting and showy tombs. Ely won’t let you mash it in to those generalities. Just look up.

All medieval cathedrals faced the challenge of what to put over the space where the arms of their cross-shaped floorpans met, and Ely was one of several that had its original tower … the usual solution … collapse. Only Ely replaced its tower with an octagonal lantern, decorated with a host of angels and pierced with windows that let natural light flood into the centre of the cathedral. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. And if that weren’t enough to make the cathedral distinctive, it has a unique painted ceiling above the nave. That's much more modern than the octagon, done as part of Victorian renovations, but it’s completed in medieval style and colours and is, in its way, as impressive as the story cycle painted onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In Ely, it’s not the Book of Genesis but the ancestry of Christ that gets the episodic treatment. 

And if that’s not enough to differentiate Ely in your memories, it also boasts the largest Lady Chapel in England. It is, sadly, a ghost of its original self. This part of the country was at the heart of the Reformation. Oliver Cromwell literally lived down the street. Generations of rampaging iconoclasts raged through here, smashing up stained glass windows, scrubbing away paintings, and knocking the heads off the hundreds of statues that writhed through the gothic tracery in this enormous room. The resulting austerity, however, has a beauty of its own, especially because restorers made no attempt to replace the stained glass but used clear. The result is a sparklingly space of white stone and glimmering glass, bright even on a gloomy day. 

Cathedral nerds will find plenty of fine points to intrigue them as well. Ely has far more of the Romanesque in its architecture than the average cathedral, giving it an antiquity that only Durham surpasses. Curiously, it’s the exact same floor plan as Winchester Cathedral because brothers designed the two buildings and shared their work. Given that Winchester is my “home” cathedral and I know it well, it was fascinating to see how two buildings with the same skeleton can feel so radically different in their decor. Despite the vandalising reformers, plenty of attractive tombs survive. Ironically, one of the gentlemen lying in profoundly Catholic state is Oliver Cromwell’s great grandfather. A free cathedral tour is included in your ticket and well worth taking. You can add on additional tours, like a clerestory excursion that takes you to the upper-level walkways that look down into the main building, and another that takes you up into the octagon. Honestly, I didn’t plan sufficiently and just turned up without enough time to dedicate to all the wonders. I probably need to go back.

I will certainly be back to Milton Keynes in the future, as we’re settling into a pattern where I spend a week up there every six weeks or so. What’s next? Stay tuned…