Capability Brown's deer park
Fallow deer and Jacob sheep grazing free beside the Avon, in the landscape where Shakespeare supposedly poached his deer.
Acabashi — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Acabashi — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Acabashi — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Acabashi — CC BY-SA 4.0
The story every visitor arrives with is that a teenage Shakespeare was caught poaching deer in this park and hauled before its owner, Sir Thomas Lucy, whom he later lampooned as a pompous magistrate. No document backs it up, but the deer are entirely real: herds of fallow deer and piebald Jacob sheep graze freely across roughly 185 acres of parkland on the River Avon, landscaped by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown around 1760. That scene, more than the house, is the reason to make the trip out from Stratford. The house went up in 1558 on land the Lucys had held since 1247, and Elizabeth I slept here for two nights in 1572, yet almost everything you see inside dates from the 1830s, when George Hammond Lucy and his wife Mary Elizabeth rebuilt it as an Elizabethan Revival showpiece: a Great Hall with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and family portraits, a crowded library, a dining room heavy with treasures. The red-brick Tudor gatehouse at the entrance is about the only piece left untouched. Members of the family still live in part of the house, which lends the place a warmth many stately homes turned museum lack. For families: the house opens only 11:00 to 15:00, keeps shorter hours and fewer days in winter, and its tickets are handed out on arrival, first come first served, so call at the visitor reception in the car park before anything else. The ground floor works for pushchairs and wheelchairs; the upper floors are stairs. Children usually prefer the service courtyard anyway, open from 10:30: a complete Victorian kitchen, the laundry and the carriage collection, all a good refuge when it rains. Picnics on the grass are allowed, there is a restaurant and a café (neither bar-led), and there is no prayer room. Getting there: about 8 km (5 miles) east of Stratford along the B4086, a quarter of an hour by car, with free parking around 300 yards from the entrance. Stagecoach bus 15 from Stratford stops at the Charlecote Pheasant, right outside the park gate, in about 30 minutes; a taxi is quicker. Allow half a day and pair it with Warwick Castle, roughly 10 km north. Last entry to the park is 16:00; in winter the hours shorten and the river sometimes floods the lower gardens. April to October is the time to come.
Fallow deer and Jacob sheep grazing free beside the Avon, in the landscape where Shakespeare supposedly poached his deer.
A barrel-vaulted Great Hall and a treasure-packed library behind an untouched gatehouse of 1558.
A complete Victorian kitchen, laundry and carriage collection; the best corner for children and rainy days.
Wellesbourne, Warwick CV35 9ER
If you have one day and children, Warwick Castle wins: it is bigger, louder and built for them. Charlecote is the calm half-day; go if you want deer, a riverside walk and a house a family actually lives in rather than a museum display. Doing both in one day works with a car: Charlecote in the morning (the house opens at 11:00), Warwick after lunch.
Take the house ticket: £2 for the Great Hall and library is the best value on site, but it opens only 11:00–15:00 and tickets go on arrival, so be there before 11 in July and August. With toddlers who will not last in a quiet house, the grounds ticket is enough.