200 Landmark time machines
Travel back in time on your holiday
Our 200 extraordinary historic buildings are time machines. We delved into our archives to find that, taken together, they share an incredible 52,000 years of history. Here we've collated images of some of your favourite Landmarks as they stand today and back in their heyday. Time travel in comfort from as little as £16 per person per night. Everyone is welcome.
Peter's Tower
Lympstone, Devon
Peters Tower has witnessed over 130 years of history from its commanding position on the Exe Estuary. Reaching over 70 feet high, the Tower was built in 1885 by Mr W.H.Peters as a memorial to his widow Mary Jane, ‘whose loss is much felt by all classes of society, especially by the poorer inhabitants of the parish’ according to The Devon and Exeter Daily Gazette. The much-loved local eye-catcher became a refuge for fishermen stranded by storms and squalls and is now a haven for Landmarkers.
From £23pppn
Sleeps 2
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Alton Station
Alton, Staffordshire
Throngs of day-trippers stepped onto Alton Station's platform from the 1850s for the next century. They descended from the pottery towns to visit the famous gardens at Alton Towers. The station was part of the Churnet Valley branch line for the North Staffordshire Railway, whose stations were created in a range of styles such as Tudor and Jacobean. Alton was unique in being Italianate in design.
From £15pppn
Sleeps 8
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Tixall Gatehouse
Near Stafford, Staffordshire
Today the turreted gatehouse stands majestic yet curiously isolated aside from the sheep grazing the surrounding fields. Over its 450-year history the gatehouse has had two companions: Elizabethan stone and timber-framed Old Tixall Hall which was pulled down in the 1760s, and a later Georgian house built further to the east but demolished in 1927. The proud gatehouse has observed the landscape’s long history and the people living and working within it.
From £20pppn
Sleeps 4+2
North Street
Cromford, Derbyshire
Until the 1770s Cromford was a tiny hamlet in the isolated Derwent valley. A decade later, the peaceful setting had been transformed after Richard Arkwright built a cotton spinning mill. North Street would have housed much of his initial workforce, and represents one of the earliest examples of the terraced industrial housing that was to become so characteristic of industrial towns over the next century. Unfortunately, no records remain with names of the families who lived at Number 10, but life in and outside our Landmark would have been bustling and intense.
From £13pppn
Sleeps 4
The Ruin
Hackfall, Grewelthorpe
Despite becoming rather overgrown, the dramatic landscape over which the Ruin perches was a favourite tourist destination until the 1920s. Our little pavilion sits above the remnants of the outstanding 18th-century garden: ‘After a tedious ride… through fields and intricate by-lanes, I reached the little village of Gruelthorpe, and visited Hackfall, one of the most picturesque scenes in the north of England’, wrote Welsh naturalist, Thomas Pennant.
From £38pppn
Sleeps 2
Church Cottage
Llandygwydd, Cardiganshire
Our charity's mission to halt the loss of heritage is made particularly acute at Llandygwydd. Church Cottage stands alone, the landscape around it empty since the demolition of neighbouring St Tygwydd's Church in 2000. The cottage has a special place in Landmark’s history, as it was the very first building Landmark restored, opening to guests in 1967.
From £13pppn
Sleeps 4
Freston Tower
Near Ipswich, Suffolk
The striking red-brick six-storey Freston Tower was built in 1579 for wealthy Ipswich merchant Thomas Gooding. Plausibly commissioned ahead of Queen Elizabeth’s long anticipated visit to Ipswich in late August 1579, Freston was one of several tall brick towers built for Tudor merchants in the period. Giving splendid views of the merchants’ vessels passing in and out of port, the buildings functioned as lavish prospect towers suitable for entertaining.
From £29pppn
Sleeps 4
Image: Edwardian sightseers visit Freston Tower
Woodsford Castle
Near Dorchester, Dorset
In the 1850s a careful restoration of Woodsford Castle was carried out by John Hicks of Dorchester, assisted by builder Mr Hardy. Mr Hardy’s son, Thomas, later joined Hicks’ office to train as an architect – before finding fame as an author and poet. Situated in the heart of so-called ‘Hardy country,’ Woodsford is the surviving part of a much larger quadrangular 14th-century castle, twice close to ruination and twice saved from the threat.
From £18 pppn
Sleeps 8
Image: Woodsford Castle in 1951
The Grange
Ramsgate, Kent
Catholic-convert Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin is perhaps most famous for designing the rich interiors of the Houses of Parliament. From 1843, however, he was designing his own family home on a plot of land in Ramsgate, Kent. The Grange was joined by a series of buildings, including a presbytery, parish church and a monastery, all designed in the Gothic architectural style to facilitate his ideal of life in the Medieval Ages. Sadly Pugin died at only 40 years old in 1852, just two years after the jewel-bright interiors of the Grange were completed.
From £23pppn
Sleeps 8
Image: A True Prospect of St Augustine’s Church now erecting at Ramsgate in the Isle of Thanet, painted by Augustus Pugin in 1849.
