The chapel
A Victorian echo of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, all stained glass and carved stone, and the finest space on the estate.
A fortune built on bird droppings. That is not a joke: William Gibbs, who paid for this gloriously overwrought Gothic pile, cornered the trade in Peruvian guano fertiliser and by the 1860s was the richest man in England without a title. He spent the money as a devout Victorian would: a house of 106 rooms bristling with turrets and pinnacles, designed by John Norton in 1863-65, and a private chapel added in 1872-77 and modelled on the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, joined to the house by a covered bridge. Tyntesfield sits in North Somerset countryside about 12 km south-west of Bristol; from the city centre it is a 25-30 minute drive along the A370 and then the B3128, or roughly 45 minutes on the X6 bus towards Clevedon, which stops at the main gate. The nearest station, Nailsea and Backwell, is about 6 km away by road and you will need a taxi from there. What sets this house apart from hundreds of other English country houses is that it was never emptied. When the National Trust bought it in 2002, after a public appeal raised GBP 8.2 million in a hundred days, everything was still in place: more than 70,000 objects, the largest collection at any Trust property, from the books lining the vast library, reckoned the most important Victorian library in the Trust's care, to eighteenth-century Chinese porcelain and a seventeenth-century Spanish painting of St Lawrence that hangs in the middle of one wall of the hall. The route through the house begins in that hall, its ceiling 13 metres up and built expressly to make you gasp, then moves through the dining room, the library, the drawing room and the first-floor bedrooms (stairs, unavoidably), before ending in the chapel, which to our mind is the best thing here: stained glass, carved stone and total quiet. The grounds run to some 220 hectares and deserve the second half of your day: a walled kitchen garden with its glasshouses, a classical orangery of 1897, and woodland with three play areas for different ages plus a den-building village that children genuinely adore. The Cow Barn cafe at Home Farm and the Pavilion cafe by the garden serve plain British food with no obvious halal option; families are better off bringing a picnic, and there is no shortage of places to eat it. Practicalities: pushchairs are not allowed inside the house, so bring a carrier for small children, and the house is about a kilometre's walk from the car park. Non-member adults pay GBP 21 and a family of two adults and up to three children GBP 52.50, plus GBP 5 for parking in summer or GBP 3 in winter. The house is open only from 10:30 to 15:30, while the estate opens at 10:00 and stays open until 18:00 in summer and 17:00 in winter; in the school holidays queues for the house can build when it gets busy, so head there first and leave the gardens for later. In December the house is dressed for Christmas with real theatrical flair, which justifies a winter visit despite the short days; in January and February expect fewer rooms open and a lot of mud on the paths.
A Victorian echo of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, all stained glass and carved stone, and the finest space on the estate.
More than 70,000 objects left exactly where the Gibbs family kept them, from the library shelves to the porcelain and the paintings in the hall.
Three play areas and a den-building village in the woods give children the second half of the day.
Wraxall, North Somerset, BS48 1PA
With only one full day in Bristol, stay in the city: Clifton Suspension Bridge, the SS Great Britain and the street art matter more. Tyntesfield earns a second day, or a stop if you are staying in the area with a car, especially with children who need room to run; five hours here go quickly.
December, yes: the house is dressed for Christmas and the whole place turns theatrical. January and February are a harder sell: the house shuts at 15:30, some rooms may be closed and the paths are muddy. May to September is the time for the gardens.