Already discovered by filmmakers, this English town is a revelation

It is my son’s idea to find the house where his father, who died some years ago, was born.

It’s in Stamford, a Lincolnshire town that my husband and I had often passed on our way to and from Lincoln, where he grew up, but we never stopped for a look and over the years, I started to confuse Stamford with nearby Grantham, Margaret Thatcher’s bigger and much busier hometown, a very different place.

St Marys Bridge and the River Welland, in Stamford.Credit: iStock

So Stamford comes as a complete revelation to me. Built mainly of sandy-coloured limestone and slate mined locally, it has probably changed very little since Walter Scott called it the finest stone town in England. Filmmakers discovered it long ago, as it’s a picture-perfect Jane Austen setting, and much of the 2005 feature film of Pride & Prejudice was shot there, as was the most popular of the BBC’s versions of Middlemarch. And on the outskirts is Burghley House, the massive home of Elizabeth I’s adviser, William Cecil, which has also been reborn as a film set.

It’s closed when we are there, so we aren’t able to see its Tudor-era kitchen with its fan-vaulted ceiling, which once opened to the sky. Nor could we explore its 18 staterooms, one of which contains a bed where Princess Victoria slept on a visit in 1835 before becoming queen. No one has explained why the bed is in a drawing room, sharing the space with two family portraits by Gainsborough.

But we do stroll through the grounds, spotting deer grazing in Burghley Park, on the bank of the River Welland, diagonally facing Stamford’s meadows on the other side. And we surveyed the 18th-century gardens established by Capability Brown, who also designed the estate’s stables, orangery and a greenhouse in neo-Gothic.

Deer in the grounds of Burghley Park.Credit: iStock

We arrive in the town after dark, but have little difficulty finding our Airbnb. It was once the toll house on the High Street bridge spanning the river.

Stamford is a town made for walking, full of lanes and alleyways opening on to the unexpected. We follow one and find ourselves in the cloisters lining the gardens of Brownes Hospital, an ornate 15th-century building with a crenellated clock tower and stained-glass windows.

Famed for being the best example of a medieval English almshouse still standing, it was home in the 1490s to “ten poor men and two poor women” who had to attend chapel twice daily to pray for the hospital’s founders, a rich wool merchant and his family.

The apartments of Lord Burghley’s Hospital, founded in 1597.Credit: iStock

It still provides accommodation for the less fortunate. There are 13 one-bedroom flats giving on to the cloister garden available rent-free to people with a particular problem, whether it be financial or some other circumstance which means they need help in finding somewhere to live. They pay a weekly maintenance charge plus a council tax and their own electricity bills. No doubt some of them have been relieved to learn that church attendance is no longer compulsory.

My son’s research soon turns up the house we are looking for, a tiny two-storey place with two attic windows, standing out from its neighbours along the terrace because its honey-toned bricks have been hidden behind a white stucco façade – effectively cancelling out any hint of the historic or picturesque.

Even so, it is just a short distance from some of the town’s grandest houses. One of them, Stukeley House, is a relative newcomer, dating only from 1800, but the house that once stood on its site is said to have sheltered Charles I on his last night of freedom in 1646.

The stonework that makes Stamford so sought-after as a film set.Credit: iStock

The history of the town goes back to the 11th century – it appears in the Domesday Book of 1086. Handily placed between London and York, it attracted the Saxons and the Danes who both built settlements beside the river before the Norman Conquest.

In the 14th century, it grew rich through the production of glazed earthenware and woollen cloth and it was still prospering 400 years later because of its importance as a coach stop along the Great North Road. Its streetscape somehow survived the Industrial Revolution, the most elegant buildings remaining intact, and it was just as lucky during World War II and the era of re-development that followed. It was declared Lincolnshire’s first conservation area in 1967.

We happily wander its streets for two days, stopping for Devonshire teas in one of its many cafes, buying berets and gloves against the winter cold at its street market and exploring a bookshop of the kind I had long thought was extinct. It’s a warren. You step down to it from the High Street and chart a course along narrow aisles between ceiling-high bookcases stacked with volumes both new and so old that they have probably been there since the shop first opened its doors. There are stiffly bound atlases and encyclopedias as well as children’s annuals dating back to the glory days of The Dandy and The Beano. It’s nostalgia unlimited.

From there, we go in search of entertainment for my five year-old granddaughter, heading for the Stamford Arts Centre, both a tourist information centre and home to one of Britain’s oldest provincial theatres, built in the 18th century, as were the town’s assembly rooms next door.

My son books two seats for a pantomime version of Robin Hood on film while my daughter-in-law and I go shopping. Stamford’s status as a living piece of history doesn’t mean that modern boutiques and supermarkets are missing from its centre. They just have to conform to its planning regulations.

Much of the town’s history has been written in its pubs, although few still operate. One of the best known of these is The George, which dates from 1600 – it was at its busiest during the 18th century as one of Stamford’s grandest coaching inns with its own farm and brewery, and stabling for 86 horses.

Others, regrettably, have joined a list of The Lost Pubs of Stamford, compiled by local historians. The Anchor (1820) is now a Pizza Express; The Blue Bell (1595), which once commanded the eastern side of Ironmonger Street, is an estate agent’s office; and The Coach and Horses, another coaching inn, has become a kitchen showroom.

Even The Daniel Lambert, named for one of Stamford’s most celebrated visitors, is no more. In the early 19th century, Lambert grew to fame as the heaviest man in England. In 1809, staying in the town on his way home to Leicester, he weighed 335 kilograms, yet he was thought to be in reasonable health when he collapsed and died in his room at The Waggon and Horses in High Street.

He was buried in Stamford’s cemetery and one of the town’s more entrepreneurial publicans bought the suit of clothes in which he died to exhibit in his own pub, renamed The Daniel Lambert. These days, a life-size model of Lambert, dressed in a copy of the suit, is on display in the Town Hall.

The history of Britain itself can be read in Stamford’s architecture. Once a walled town, it has the ruins of one of William the Conqueror’s castles as well as a 12th-century priory with Romanesque decoration. All Saints Church is recorded in the Domesday Book. St John’s has a medieval roof adorned with angel carvings and St Martin’s, built in the 15th century, holds the tomb of the first Lord Burghley’s tomb and those of his descendants.

Neo-Gothic, Italianate, Greek Revival and Arts and Crafts feature in the town’s more elaborate public buildings and there are Georgian terraces, a row of small medieval houses and an early 19th-century bath house. On the walking tour organised from the Arts Centre, you’ll feel as if you’ve travelled back 10 centuries in a single afternoon.

THE DETAILS

DRIVE
Stamford is two hours north of London by car via the MI or two-and-half hours by bus from London Stratford City Bus Station.

STAY
There are several three- and four-star hotels, along with guesthouses and holiday rentals. Phone Stamford Tourist Information, 01780 755611. See discoversouthkesteven.com

VISIT
Burghley House is a Tudor-era mansion and estate (burghley.co.uk). Woolsthorpe Manor is the 17th-century home of Sir Isaac Newton (and its garden host to the Newton apple tree – see nationaltrust.org.uk).

The writer travelled at her own expense.