Other in Cambridgeshire

Cambridge University Botanic Garden is one of the finest botanic gardens in Britain, a 40-acre scientific collection and public garden in the heart of Cambridge that has been developed continuously since its establishment on the present site in 1846. The garden serves both as a living scientific collection for the University of Cambridge's research and teaching programmes and as a public garden of considerable horticultural quality and seasonal interest, and the combination of scientific rigour and aesthetic ambition has produced a garden that succeeds on both levels simultaneously. The garden was founded by Professor John Stevens Henslow, who was Charles Darwin's mentor at Cambridge and who directed the young Darwin toward natural history fieldwork that ultimately led to the development of evolutionary theory. Henslow recognised the inadequacy of the university's earlier botanical garden and secured the present site and resources to create a properly equipped scientific collection of plants from around the world. The scientific tradition Henslow established has been maintained and developed across nearly two centuries, with the garden's research collections and seed bank contributing to contemporary plant conservation and climate change research. The main features of the garden include the rock garden, one of the finest in any British botanic garden; the systematic beds, where plants are arranged by taxonomic family to allow direct comparison of related species; the glasshouses containing tropical, Mediterranean, arid and alpine plant collections; and the extensive winter garden designed to provide interest and colour during the quietest months of the horticultural year. The nine National Collections of genera hosted by the garden include nationally important holdings of Tulipa, Geranium and Fritillaria. The garden's location within Cambridge makes it an excellent complement to a visit to the university colleges, museums and the River Cam, and the combination of scientific interest and garden beauty makes it rewarding for visitors with widely varying backgrounds and interests.

Sandringham Estate in northwest Norfolk has been a private royal residence for over 160 years, purchased by the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, in 1862 on the advice of Queen Victoria who recognised the value of a private country property away from the formalities of state. The estate encompasses approximately 8,000 hectares of farmland, woodland and formal gardens around the main house, and its connection to the personal and informal life of successive generations of the royal family gives it a character quite distinct from the official royal palaces open to visitors in London. The house itself is a substantial Victorian country house built in the Jacobean Revival style between 1870 and 1900, replacing an earlier house on the site that the Prince of Wales found insufficiently grand for his purposes. The style, which draws on the elaborate decorative vocabulary of Elizabethan and Jacobean architecture, was fashionable among the Victorian wealthy as an expression of English heritage and tradition. The house is not architecturally distinguished in the way that Balmoral or Windsor Castle are, but it has the comfortable, lived-in character of a house that has been genuinely used and loved rather than simply maintained for public display. Sandringham is most famous as the place where the royal family spends Christmas, a tradition established by Edward VII and maintained with remarkable consistency ever since. The church of St Mary Magdalene in the grounds, in which the family worships on Christmas Day, attracts considerable media attention each year, and the practice of the royal family walking from the house to church and greeting members of the public gathered outside has become one of the most familiar rituals of the British royal year. The house and parts of the grounds are open to visitors during the summer season when the royal family is not in residence. The house tours provide access to a number of ground-floor rooms furnished as they are used by the family, including the main drawing room, dining room and the Saloon, the principal reception space. The museum in the old stables contains a remarkable collection of royal memorabilia, vintage cars and shooting and sporting equipment accumulated over generations. The formal gardens surrounding the house include the Norwich Gates, presented to the Prince and Princess of Wales as a wedding gift in 1863, and the extensive parkland beyond provides pleasant walking around the estate's country tracks and woodland.