Doddington Hall & Gardens

For the passing visitor, Doddington Hall covers several bases. For a start there is the hall itself, a handsome Elizabethan mansion with its original cupolas and a homely interior, exhibiting the accumulated knick-knacks of the landed gentry who still own the place. Behind the house are the gardens, including a substantial walled garden at its best in spring and early summer, and they grow Christmas trees on the premises too. There’s more: a large, sympathetically converted old barn across from the Hall holds an excellent shop, where they specialise in local produce, which also features on the menu of the adjoining café: the vegetables and salads originate in the Kitchen Garden and most of the beef comes from Doddington’s own herd of Lincoln Red cattle.