Cannon Hall Museum

Details

NB Cannon Hall Frm, although nearby, is not part of Cannon Hall Museum.
You can read about the farm here.

Seventy acres of elegant parkland, with the stately Hall and gardens as a centrepiece, evoke a quintessentially English rural landscape. Strolling around, you may easily imagine yourself a character in an Austen novel; it's little wonder that the movie industry frequently casts the atmospheric surroundings as a perfect backdrop to the bustles and bonnets of the Georgian period.

The house itself was home to the Spencer and Spencer-Stanhope families for almost three hundred years.

The museum holds many surprises – pottery by De Morgan and Moorcroft, stunning glassware, paintings by Dutch and English masters and furniture by Hepplewhite. The fascinating Regimental Museum, purveyor of facts and adventures, vividly illustrates the part played by the 13th/18th Royal Hussars in the Charge of the Light Brigade.

'Below stairs' you will find the cavernous Victorian kitchens and scullery, fuelled by fully-working cast iron ranges – an extraordinary view of pre-convenience cooking.

The historic walled garden has its treasures too – the Cannon Hall pear tree collection, one of the most extensive in the North of England with over forty varieties, is celebrated annually.

There is also a pinery – a greenhouse for growing pineapples – and the original and unique 'Cannon Hall Muscat' grapevine, reputed to have been grown from a pip brought back from Athens by John Spencer-Stanhope in 1802. A cutting of the vine was exported to Australia and cultivated, and its descendants produce today's fine Australian wines.

Download the official Cannon Hall leaflet here.

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