Scenic Point in Cambridgeshire

Oundle is one of the finest and most complete small market towns in England, a Northamptonshire town of Jurassic limestone buildings, medieval street pattern and considerable architectural distinction that has survived the pressures of growth and development with an unusual degree of integrity. The town is dominated by Oundle School, one of the older English public schools, whose buildings form a significant part of the townscape and whose presence has given Oundle a cultural vitality and an architectural investment that distinguish it from comparable Northamptonshire market towns. The core of the town around the market place and the Church of St Peter is a remarkably coherent collection of seventeenth and eighteenth-century limestone architecture, the local Barnack rag and Weldon stone giving the buildings a warm golden-brown colour that is characteristic of the limestone belt running through Northamptonshire and into the Cotswolds. The church itself has a fine medieval spire and interior of considerable quality, and the surrounding streetscape of the town has an architectural consistency that reflects several centuries of building in a single local material by craftsmen who understood its qualities. The Talbot Inn in the market place is one of the most historically interesting buildings in Oundle, a seventeenth-century coaching inn built partly from stone salvaged from Fotheringhay Castle, the castle a few miles to the north where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned and executed in 1587. The staircase within the Talbot is said to be the original from Fotheringhay, a claim that has never been definitively established but that adds a layer of resonant historical association to an already distinguished building. The Nene Valley and the water meadows surrounding the town provide excellent walking and cycling, and the village of Fotheringhay with its castle mound and fine church is a short drive away.

Stamford in Lincolnshire is widely regarded as the finest stone town in England, a market town of extraordinary architectural quality built almost entirely from local oolitic limestone that gives it a pale cream colour and a streetscape of remarkable consistency and beauty. The combination of medieval churches, seventeenth and eighteenth-century town houses, the absence of significant modern development and the setting beside the River Welland creates a townscape used repeatedly as a film location when historical England is required. The town was one of the five Danish boroughs of the Danelaw and the five medieval parish churches demonstrate the prosperity of a community that was one of the most significant commercial centres in the east Midlands. The Georgian architecture of St Mary's Street, Barn Hill and St George's Square is the most celebrated quality of the townscape, the eighteenth-century rebuilding creating the streetscapes that are the architectural highlights of any walk through the town. The nearby Burghley House, one of the grandest Elizabethan houses in England, provides an architectural complement to the town visit. The combination of the town quality, the surrounding Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire countryside and the accessibility from the East Midlands makes Stamford one of the most rewarding small towns in the region.