Wallington House Northumberland
Wallington House in the Northumberland countryside near Cambo is one of the most interesting and most intellectually stimulating National Trust houses in northern England, a seventeenth and eighteenth-century house of considerable quality whose interior is remarkable for the Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the Central Hall commissioned by the Trevelyan family and for the connection to some of the most significant intellectual and artistic figures of the Victorian period. The house and its estate provide a combination of architectural quality, art history and the Northumberland landscape of considerable richness. The Central Hall of the house was roofed over in the 1850s and decorated with eight large paintings depicting the history of Northumberland from Roman times to the nineteenth century by William Bell Scott, an artist closely connected with the Pre-Raphaelite circle. The paintings, with their narrative ambition, their historical subject matter and their quality of observation, are among the most important examples of Victorian history painting outside the national collections. Ruskin, Millais, Rossetti and other major figures of the Victorian art world visited Wallington and the house was a significant cultural hub of the northern Pre-Raphaelite circle. The Northumberland walled garden is one of the finest in the National Trust's portfolio, its restored beds and the central ornamental pond providing an excellent horticultural complement to the house interior. The wider estate of farmland, woodland and the valley of the River Wansbeck provides excellent walking in the characteristic Northumberland countryside.