The Georgian period gave us many of Britain’s most beautiful buildings – in cities, towns and villages. Yet much of our Georgian inheritance remains in danger...

£40, afternoon

Set in the heart of Clerkenwell, the Charterhouse has been living the Nation’s history since 1348. Initially a Black Death burial ground, the site became home to the largest Carthusian monastery in the world until it was brutally dissolved in 1537 when 16 monks became proto-martyrs of the Reformation.

A grand Tudor mansion replaced the monastery. Elizabeth I spent the first days of her reign at the Charterhouse and James I (of England) created 133 Barons in the Great Chamber prior to his coronation. In 1611 Thomas Sutton acquired the mansion and site to house his new Charity, an almshouse and school. The school separated and moved out of London in 1872 but the almhouse thrives to this day amidst the medieval, Tudor, Jacobean and later architecture that makes the site so fascinating. This tour will include a guided tour of the Charterhouse, Master’s Lodge and a drinks reception in the Old Library.

This visit is for members’ only. 

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

Join the Young Georgians on a private special access tour of St Marylebone Parish Church, designed by Thomas Hardwick in 1813-17. Guests will also (weather depending) be allowed to inspect the roof and advised to dress appropriately. A drink and donation to the church is included in the ticket price.

£20. This event is open to all. 

Tickets include a drink and refreshments sponsored by Box Car Bakery & Deli. A cash bar will also be available. 

and that this is event is held in collaboration with the St. Marylebone Society.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

Image: Alan Baxter

£15 members/£18 non-members

The gardens of the Earl of Burlington are among the most famous in the country but what do we know of the gardens which lay next door, and which were later acquired, adapted and incorporated into the present gardens?

Much new information has recently come to light on their history from the archives of Chatsworth House and elsewhere and will be the subject of this talk.

The talk starts at 6.30pm, doors open from 6.15pm.

Georgian Group members are eligible for a discount on their ticket by entering GGMEMBER at the checkout.

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list

CAMBRIDGESHIRE VISIT: Farm Hall and Island Hall, Godmanchester

£75, all day

These two handsome red brick Grade II* houses of the 1740s share many stylistic similarities, both playing significant roles in World War II.  Each was built for an important public servant whose descendants included two distinguished generals. They are effectively country houses on the western edge of the small town of Godmanchester with views to the River Great Ouse.

Farm Hall was built in 1746 for Charles Clarke, a judge and MP.  The north and south pedimented elevations are similar, of 3 storeys and 5 bays.  The southern lime avenue dates from the 1740s, while a canal leads north to the Great Ouse.  The owner, Prof Marcial Echenique, designed an obelisk to commemorate Farm Hall’s wartime intelligence use, while German scientists were interned there for six months in 1945 to elicit information about Germany’s nuclear plans.

Island Hall was built in 1749 for Original Jackson for his son John, Receiver-General for Huntingdon.  The main elevations are identical, pedimented, of 3 storeys and 3 bays, with 2-storey, 2-bay wings.  The house was bought in 1804 by Jacob Julian Baumgartner, a Swiss Huguenot merchant. His Vane Percy descendants still live there after nine generations, having repurchased it in 1983 following its wartime requisition by the RAF, subsequent conversion to council flats and a fire.

Andrew Wells will lead.

Members to make their own arrangements for transport. This visit is for members’ only. 

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

Image: Historic England

£35

The summer – with some sunshine – will have arrived by June, so come and spend a sunny morning along the banks of the Thames discovering this beautiful stretch of the River, with plenty of historical and contemporary themes.

We will discover a mortuary known as Dead Man’s Hole, English Delftware pottery and the Hanseatic League’s presence in the Steelyard.  We will then move upstream to hear about Customs Houses alongside Geoffrey Chaucer, Roman docks alongside an operating freight wharf, while walking via stories of Baynard Castle and the pulpits of Blackfriars Bridge.  We will also touch upon 1920s tiles, and twenty first century mosaics, before  completing our summer saunter with seabird motifs and mudlarking tales.  We will also discuss “shooting the rapids” at London Bridge, and the changing views of the London skyline.

The Walk will be led by Meg Ryder, a Londoner who hails from Pimlico and now lives in Camberwell.  Meg is a qualified solicitor who left the law to establish bespoke walking tours in London to follow her passion for all things historical, artistic and architectural. Meg has a Masters in History from Edinburgh University, and studied History of Art and Architectural History in Rome.

We will meet at 10.45am for a 11am start. This event is for members only.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£70 members/ £75 non members, All day

Members will make private visits to two significant Georgian houses, both owing their prosperity to the cloth industry pioneered by their early owners. We start at Corsham Court (Grade I), originally a medieval house owned by the Crown.  Despite its Elizabethan appearance, little remains of the major rebuilding in 1582 by Thomas Smythe, collector of customs in London. After several ownership changes, Corsham was acquired in 1747 by Paul Methuen (died 1792), whose descendants still live there.  They remodelled it over the next century in many styles – Palladian (Ireson and Brown), Gothic (Nash) and neo-Elizabethan (Bellamy, whose tower of 1846 dominates the N front) – successive architects replacing their predecessors’ changes.  Brown, then Repton, landscaped the park. We will see the renowned old masters first collected by Sir Paul Methuen (died 1757) and extended by 2nd Lord Methuen (died 1891).

Seend Manor House (Grade II*), was owned by the Awdry family 1695-c1924.  Ambrose Awdry built what became the manor house c 1695, mainly on the site of the lower 2-storey N front range of the present house.  His grandson Ambrose rebuilt and extended this in ashlar to the S from 1767 (rainwater heads).  This handsome taller 5-bay, 2-storey elevation, with a parapet and dormers in a mansard roof, has a dramatic long view towards Salisbury Plain.  The W end intriguingly features 11 blind windows and ornamental detail on the chimneystack.  The N elevation was remodelled c 1800, rendered with ashlar dressings and a tripartite window above the Ionic porch.  Most of the interior is original and has been atmospherically conserved by the present owners, Stephen and Amanda Clark, the designer, who have created a remarkable and exotic walled garden.

Andrew Wells leads.

Georgian Group members’ should add the discount code GGMEMBER at the checkout. 

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£40/ £25 NT members (exc. lunch), all day

Join us for a visit to 17^th Century Fenton House, ‘a hidden gen in London, a place of unique charm and ambience’.  The tour will be led by the National Trust curator for the property who will point out the curiosities of the collection and members will have the opportunity to visit the beautiful gardens.

After lunch, join architectural historian and Editor of the London Topographical Society newsletter, India Wright, on this new tour of one of London’s most-loved villages. You will explore Hampstead’s historic streets, learning about the evolution of its early eighteenth-century spa resort and the burgeoning hilltop town which developed out of its popularity as a destination for health and diversion.

Members to make their own arrangements for transport.  This visit is for Georgian Group members only. For any members who are also National Trust members, please enter the code NTMEMBER at the checkout. 

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

Image: ©National Trust Images/Arnhel de Serra

£25, Morning

By kind permission of the Sunley family, members of the Georgian Group are invited to visit Godmersham Park.

The present Godmersham Park house was built in 1732 in Palladian style for Thomas Brodnax whose family had lived at Godmersham since the mid-16^th century. The architect is unknown but Christopher Hussey appraised it in Country Life in 1945 thus:

“the quality…implies a London man of status of Flitcroft or Roger Morris – scholarly Palladians yet acquainted with the English tradition…Godmersham’s charm consists to a great extent in its having been conceived on a relatively modest scale of a country gentleman’s house but executed…with the fastidiousness of the greatest houses of the period – the age of Holkham, Houghton and Wentworth Woodhouse.”

 The house is best known today as the home of Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Knight, who moved in in 1797 having acquired the house through this cousin, Thomas Brodnax May Knight (son of the aforementioned Thomas). On your tour you will be guided around House, Gardens, Heritage Centre and St Lawrence the Martyr Church by trustee and conservation architect Rebecca Lilley, who wrote her 2022 Masters Dissertation on Godmersham Park.

The house is not usually available for public viewing and has been opened especially for the group.

Members to make their own arrangements for transport. This visit is for members’ only. 

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

Image: Rebecca Lilley

£40 (exc. lunch), all day

The Grade I listed Piece Hall, Halifax is the only remaining Georgian cloth hall in the world, the sole survivor of the great eighteenth century northern cloth halls, a class of buildings which embodied the vital and dominant importance of the trade in hand woven textiles to the pre-industrial economy of the West Riding of Yorkshire, from the Middle Ages through to the early nineteenth century. The tour will be led by LDN architects, who led an extensive regeneration project completed in 2017.

Just a mile from Halifax centre, Grade II* Shibden Hall dates to 1420. Home of renowned diarist Anne Lister (1791-1840), significant changes to the architecture of Shibden Hall were made whilst she lived there. She employed the architect John Harper of York to make improvements, including the addition of a Norman-style tower c1836 for her library with modern water closets. The main hall was also re-opened to the height of the building and a gallery, new ‘Jacobethan’ panelling and a fireplace were all installed, making the space more imposing.

Members to make their own arrangements for transport.  This visit is for Georgian Group members only. 

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£25, Afternoon

Tabley House, described as the finest Palladian mansion In Cheshire was built by John Carr of York for Sir Peter Byrne Leicester in 1767. The Leicester family lived at Tabley from the 14^th Century, first in the Old Hall on a moated island, and then later in the fine Georgian house that still stands today.

This visit is for members’ only. 

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

£25, Afternoon

Orleans House Gallery stands in the grounds of the original Orleans House, a site comprising approximately six acres with natural woodland and parkland used for recreational activities. The house took its name from Louise Phillipe Duc d’Orleans (1773-1850), later King of the French, who lived there from 1815 until 1817 during his exile from France. The property was originally built in 1710 for James Johnston, Joint Secretary of State for Scotland under William III by John James. The baroque Octagon Room, Grade I listed, was constructed around 1720 and designed by James Gibbs. It features fine gilded decorative plasterwork by distinguished stuccatori (plasterers), Giuseppe Artari and Giovanni Bagutti. The HLF funded ‘Transforming Orleans House’ project completed was completed in 2018. The tour will be led by Ayaka Takaka of Donald Insall Architects.

This visit is for members’ only. 

Please read our Terms and Conditions before booking.

If tickets have sold out for this event, please email members@georgiangroup.org.uk to be added to the waiting list.

Image: Morley Von Sternberg