Severn Valley Hidden Houses

Enjoy exclusive owner guided tours of two of Gloucestershire’s least known houses tucked away on the edge of the Severn valley.

Discover Grade I Frampton Court, owned by the Clifford family since the 11th century. The Palladian house of the early 1730s is centred on the Green, and attributed to the Bristol architect John Strahan. The house is stone built with the symmetrical front having a central pediment with four Ionic pilasters with smaller wings to each side which have chimney stacks with an arch opening containing bells. The house contains well preserved Jacobean panelled rooms with tiled fireplaces and a collection of 18th century furniture and china. There is a collection of Victorian watercolours known as the Frampton Flora which are representations of local wild flowers painted by various family members in the 19th century. The gardens contain a Grade I Gothic orangery, which consists of three octagonal towers, the largest of which has a small cupola, and a 360-foot-long ornamental canal in the style of William Halfpenny. There is also an attractive mid-18th century dovecote. 

Woodchester Park House

Later, explore Woodchester Park House, a large high Victorian Gothic building dating from around 1850. The original house was originally small but was considerably enlarged in the 17th and 18th centuries and then altered and enlarged again by Benjamin Bucknall in 1862 for William Leigh as a temporary residence while he was building Woodchester Mansion that was then abandoned and never completed. The house is built of random rubble and coursed, with squared limestone and ashlar chimneys with stone and a slate Welsh roof. The house has two full parapet gables with kneelers and finials, a moulded Tudor arched doorway, a mullioned and transomed casement and attic cross window and a quatrefoil gable vent with diagonal offset corner buttresses.

Tickets £97 including a two-course pub lunch at the Old Fox Inn, Coaley. Lunch options to be made available to attendees in September 2026.