Cragside
The turrets and towers of Tudor-style Cragside, a Victorian country house, look out over the edge of a forested hillside. It was built between 1864 and 1895 by Lord Armstrong, an early electrical engineer and inventor, and designed by Richard Norman Shaw, a well-regarded architect. Among Armstrong's contemporaries, Cragside was called "the palace of a modern magician" because it contained so many of his inventions. This was the first house in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity; the grounds also hold an energy center with restored mid-Victorian machinery. There are Pre-Raphaelite paintings and an elaborate mock-Renaissance marble chimneypiece.
The grounds are as impressive as the house; they cover around 1,000 acres and include an enormous sandstone rock garden, a picture-perfect iron bridge, and 14 different waymarked paths and trails, which bloom with rhododendrons in June. There's also a children's adventure playground. If you come by car, don't miss the six-mile Carriage Drive around the estate. There are some lovely viewpoints and picnic spots along the way, like the gorgeous Nelly's Moss lake. To get here, take the B6341 southwest of Alnwick for about 10.5 miles. Paths around the grounds are steep, and distances can be long, so wear comfortable shoes.
