Charlecote - A Victorian home

2019 opening

Thursday-Tuesday
• House is open from 11am to 3.30pm, last entry at 3pm.
• Admission by timed ticket, collect from Visitor Reception when you arrive.
• Tickets often all distributed by lunchtime on busy weekends and Bank Holidays.

Wednesdays
• Short taster tours only, led by our volunteers. Limited opening helps us to reduce damage to our collection from daylight and undertake conservation work.
• Tour tickets are available from Visitor Reception when you arrive, on a first-come first-served basis.
• Tickets are very limited and not bookable in advance, usually all distributed by mid-morning.

Warwickshire School Holidays (Including Wednesdays)
• Admission as Thursday-Tuesday above.

New exhibition

Discover more about 19th-century fashion in a new exhibition running until the end of September. Put together by MA student Ellice Bishop, and inspired by Mary Elizabeth Lucy's memoirs, this exhibition gives visitors an insight into Victorian dressmaking, fabrics and their care.

Grand designs in Tudor style

Enter the house through the porch built to impress Elizabeth I when she visited, and begin your visit in the Great Hall surrounded by 400 years of Lucy family portraits. 

Now find out how the Lucy family lived in Victorian times as you wander at your own pace through the Drawing Room, Library, Billiard Room and Dining Room - all with stories to tell. Make your way upstairs to see the Ebony Bedroom and Orange Bedroom.

There are limited rooms open to the public as the Lucy family still lives in one wing of the house and part of the upper floor is taken up with our holiday flat.

Chat to our friendly room guides about the artefacts you see - many of the objects were brought back from the Lucys' European spending spree of the 1840s.

Mary Elizabeth and George Hammond Lucy wanted to make Victorian Charlecote conform to their fashionable idea of ‘Merrie England’ in the reign of ‘Good Queen Bess’. They spared no expense and spent lavishly on items from the Fonthill Abbey sale of items from the dissolute William Beckford.

If you'd like to know more about the paintings and artefacts that you see in the house, why not explore the National Trust Collections site?

For children

Our room guides will help children find all the Cuddly Critters hidden around the house if you can’t spot them all. Follow our children's trail around the house and discover some fascinating facts.

Please note: Buggies and rucksacks don't mix with fragile artefacts and you will be asked to leave these in the porch (limited space on busy days). Hip slings available to borrow.

Constant conservation

We'll never run out of conservation work! Whatever you find us working on when you visit, do stop and chat to discover more.

Limited opening on Wednesdays and during the winter means we can get some of this important work done more easily.

Still the Lucy family home

 Our visitors sometimes wonder why it’s not possible to see the whole house. This is because the Lucy family still live here in one wing. Many of the items you see are kindly loaned to the National Trust by the family.

Part of the upper floor is also taken up with our self-catering holiday flat, The Turret. Formerly the servants’ quarters, this is now a delightful place to stay, with glorious views of the Warwickshire countryside.

Learn about the Library

We have one of the best libraries in the National Trust's care and our room guides can tell you more if there's anything you want to know.

The books in our historic library are prone to mould and damp, due to the house's proximity to the river.

We use the funds raised by our second-hand bookshop to help with repairs and conservation work on the books in our library. If you have any second-hand books to donate, please bring them along and leave them with our friendly Visitor Reception team.