Have a stately Christmas: 10 historic houses and gardens to get the festive party started

Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire

Inside one of Waddesdon Manor’s Rapunzelesque round towers is a room named after the Ballets Russes stage designer Léon Bakst. In 1913, Bakst painted the seven panels here showing scenes from Sleeping Beauty. This year both house and illuminated gardens have Sleeping Beauty-inspired installations. Artists involved include the theatre designer Tom Piper, who helped make the Tower of London’s poppy cascade in 2014. Outside there are fairytale projections by Jamie Shiels, whose work appeared at the 2012 London Olympics. The Rothschild family’s turreted chateau looks spectacular dancing with coloured light, and the Weihnachtsmarkt-style market is back (until 22 December). There are later openings on Fridays from 22 November to Christmas.
• Wednesday-Sunday, 15 November–5 January (excluding 23-26 December), from £22 adult, £10 child (grounds only, check website for Christmas house times and prices), discounts for NT members, waddesdon.org.uk

Auckland Palace, County Durham

Once home to the prince bishops of Durham, Auckland Palace features in Bishop Auckland’s Christmas offerings for the first time this year. The palace reopened in 2019 as part of a £150m conservation project and this year 12 rooms, including the Long Dining Room and chapel, will be dressed for Christmas in shades of wine-red, gold and white. The surrounding gardens and grounds sparkle with a light trail and installations, Aglow, including neon trees and the 100-metre-long twinkly tunnel above the recently restored walled garden. Don’t miss Santa’s Village for a live show and hot drinks. The neighbouring Faith Museum, opened in 2023, has a big 18th-century nativity scene from Naples and entrance is free with a ticket for the palace.
• 15 November-31 December excluding Christmas Day and Monday, Tuesday until 16 December (Aglow from 22 November), £20 adult, £12.50 child, £52.50 family (Aglow £21.75, £14.75, £68), aucklandproject.org

Tredegar House, Newport

More than 80 trees have been decorated for Christmas at the 17th-century Tredegar House, including an extra-tall one, sparkling in the stable courtyard and visible from the M4. Inside, five centuries of yuletide cheer are celebrated in a series of rooms, from Elizabethan banquets via classic Victoriana to the 1950s, when Tredegar housed a convent school. There are festive lights in the grounds, with the formal gardens, woods and cedar-crowned lawn ideal for lakeside winter strolling. The two weekends before Christmas feature choirs, singalongs and visits from Scrooge and Santa.
• 6-9 December: 11am-4pm, 13-23 December: 12-8pm, including family weekends, £12 adult, £6 child, NT member free, nationaltrust.org

Castle Howard, North Yorkshire

Alice in Wonderland provides the theme for 2024 at Castle Howard. This 145-room palace in the Howardian hills began as a baroque extravaganza (designed by Restoration comedian John Vanbrugh with Nicholas Hawksmoor) and was finished in a calmer Palladian style. Lewis Carroll’s surreal fantasy inspires festive installations, trippy soundscapes and psychedelic projections through a series of grand rooms. Extras include willow workshops, Mad Hatter’s teas in the Grecian Hall and the chance to meet Father Christmas. There’s a grotto in the boathouse and the first-ever pop-up shop from century-old Yorkshire tearoom chain Bettys in the stable courtyard. Also new for 2024 is the Chess Club, a grownups-only dining room with cocktails served in teapots.
• 15 November-5 January, from £21, castlehoward.co.uk

Hillsborough Castle, County Down

The royal family’s Northern Irish pad is a huge Georgian house where the Anglo-Irish agreement was signed. A 12 Days of Christmas trail leads visitors round parts of the 100-acre garden, past a supersized Advent calendar and polar bear in the pond. Inside the castle, the state rooms are decked with greenery and fairy lights. You could top off a bracing walk around the lake, grotto and restored walled garden with an Ulster fry in the Weston Pavilion.
• 23 November-5 January, house and gardens £20.20 adult, £10.10 child, both open 7-8, 14-15, 20-23 December; 27 December-5 January, hrp.org.uk

Sizergh, Cumbria

Sizergh has generally hibernated through the long Cumbrian nights, but both castle and gardens will open for the first time this Christmas to help fund conservation work. Local artists have created a wildlife-inspired sound and light trail, with willow stags woven by nearby schools. There’s festive creativity in the Great Barn and an exploration of yuletides past inside the castle with lavish banquets, firelit parlour games and tree decorating. Delights in the gardens include flora and fauna-themed lamps, animated deer, and coloured light patterns that shift in time to the music. On Friday evenings and weekends, there’s a free shuttle bus from Oxenholme station via Kendal, so there’s no need to miss out on the mulled wine.
• 22 November-24 December, £11 adult, £7 child, £3 NT member, nationaltrust.org

Chatsworth House, Derbyshire

The Carnegie-medallist and former children’s laureate Joseph Coelho wrote the storybook behind this season’s spectacle in the mighty halls of Chatsworth. Coelho, the author of the Fairy Tales Gone Bad series, has imagined a site-specific quest through more than 20 rooms, called Henry and the Lion’s Christmas Feast. It features Henry Cavendish, the hydrogen-discovering 18th-century scientist, as a boy. Pop-up Pollock’s theatres recreate the picture book from different points of view, and scents of chocolate and gingerbread waft from the castle kitchens. There’s an illuminated garden trail, plus storytime with Santa in the farmyard and a Christmas market in the gardens (until 1 December).
• 9 November-5 January, from £32 adult/£8 child, chatsworth.org

Holkham Hall, Norfolk

A pianist serenades visitors as they climb the grand steps of Holkham’s marble hall. The colonnade and high ornate ceiling, inspired by Roman temples, are made of soft Staffordshire alabaster, brought to Holkham by boat. A candlelit tour through state rooms feels a suitably elegant way to enjoy this art-filled Palladian pile, finishing, on some dates, with prosecco and a mince pie. The kitchen gleams with brass jelly moulds and scarlet berries; successive rooms boast snowy trees and frost-white birds or arty bursts of colour. The park, with its deer, and the four miles of pine and dune-fringed sandy beach nearby make for varied walks.
• Self-led and guided tours, Christmas market, various dates from 29 November to 30 December; from £32 adult, £16 child, holkham.co.uk

Stirling Castle, central Scotland

On a craggy volcanic outcrop over the old town, with snowy mountains behind it, Stirling Castle looks like something from a winter folktale. It’s one of Scotland’s greatest castles and always worth a visit, especially with seasonal embellishments. There’s a Christmas fair with brass band, a wreath-making workshop, festive tea in the Great Hall (including Highland venison sausage rolls) and a staging of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Stirling Castle is a 15-minute climb through cobbled lanes from the railway station and offers 25% off all year for car-free visitors.
• Open daily (not 25-26 December), decorated in December. See website for dates of special events, from £17.50 adult, £10.50 child, historicenvironment.scot

Hever Castle, Kent

Why settle for just one fairy story? At the 14th-century Hever Castle, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, the Christmas trail winds from Wonderland to Neverland by way of the woodcarver Geppetto’s workshop, Jack’s beanstalk and the 12 Days of Christmas. The castle’s log-fire-warmed halls are suitably decked in a range of styles, and the recently restored Boleyn apartment features a Tudor yule. As the sun sets outside, where lake, grounds and castle walls are colourfully lit, a shining moon and planets form a space-themed installation.
• 22 November– 3 January (excluding 25-26 December), various times, from £23.50 adult, £15 child, hevercastle.co.uk