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Blenheim Palace

Daily

Cost: £10.50; children £5; parking £7.50 per car

Hours: 9am-5pm; house open only mid-Mar-end-Oct

Home to the Duke of Marlborough since 1705, Blenheim Palace is one of England's most spectacular stately homes, located eight miles from the medieval city of Oxford. It is also the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. Designed by Vanbrugh (assisted by William Hawksmoor), the building is a fine example of the English Baroque style, with Italianate formal gardens and a beautiful park designed by Capability Brown.

The name Blenheim derives from a decisive battle that took place on the 13th August 1704 in which Louis XIV's forces were routed by John Churchill. The valiant English commander was given the honorific title of Duke of Marlborough by Queen Anne in recompense.

The first stop in a tour of the house reveals the Great Hall with its ceiling frescoes by the Rococco painter, Sir James Thornhill (painter of the Painted Hall in Greenwich and the dome of St Paul's Cathedral).

The long, vaulted corridors connecting the north and south wings and the staircase have the signature of Vanburgh, while the State Rooms are filled with precious pictures by Reynolds, Sargent and Van Dyck. The Long Library, originally designed as a picture gallery, has a fine stucco ceiling and is home to the magnificent Willis organ, as well as marble sculptures of the first Duke of Marlborough and his munificent Queen Anne.

Blenheim's Formal Gardens were redesigned in the 1920s with views over the magnificent Water Terraces, where river gods cavort in marble sculpted by Bernini. The Arboretum has 50-foot cedars, lime avenues and a number of interesting rare trees and shrubs. It really comes into its own in spring when the grassy banks are covered in daffodils, bluebells and blossom. Also don't miss the Grand Cascade, designed by the famous Capability Brown in the 1760s, which transforms the River Glyme into a noisy bubble of water as it leaves the lake to wind south westwards under Sir William Chambers' New Bridge, before joining the Evenlode, a tributary of the Thames.

Also, few visitors ever discover Rosamund's Well, the oldest thing at Blenheim and by association the most romantic: it is a spring that has never dried up and as legends die hard, many persist in proclaiming the magic properties of the water.

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