Essex

The Essex coast is home to family seaside resorts such as Walton-on-the-Naze and Clacton-on-Sea and the Blackwater and Crouch estuaries are havens for yachts and pleasure craft.

Inland, the county city of Chelmsford has a historic 15th century cathedral and Hylands House is a beautiful Grade II* listed neo-classical villa set in over 500 acres of Hylands Park. County town, Colchester was founded by the Romans and its massive castle keep, built in 1067, houses a collection of Roman antiquities. The National Trust’s Paycocke’s House is a delightful half-timbered merchant’s house with a lovely arts and crafts garden at Coggeshall, while Constable and Turner painted some of the region’s loveliest countryside, on the Essex/Suffolk border around Dedham Vale.

Pretty, historic market towns and villages like Saffron Walden and Thaxted are dotted across the west of the county, interspersed with grander homes and landscaped gardens. Audley End House is one of England’s most decadent Jacobean mansion houses, with a unique natural history collection and tranquil gardens created by ‘Capability’ Brown.