Harvington Hall

Source

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.