Dalemain

Dalemain is a Grade I listed country house about eight kilometres southwest of Penrith in Cumbria. It stands inside the Lake District National Park on the banks of the river Eamont, where the valley narrows and the house is sheltered from the worst weather. A peel tower built in the 12th century still forms the core of the building, though later owners added wings and courtyards. The present Georgian front, completed in 1744, encloses an old courtyard and follows a symmetrical design with neoclassical features. Above the house lies a deer park that has held fallow deer for centuries. The courtyard itself began as a mediaeval hamlet built for defence and now contains farm buildings. The house has been in the Hasell family since 1679, when Sir Edward Hasell bought it and remodelled the interior. A cantilevered staircase was installed in the new front hall, and the garden façade was rebuilt four years later. The gardens reflect changing fashions, from Elizabethan knot gardens to a wild garden inspired by William Robinson. They hold one of the best collections of roses in northern England and a timeline of apple trees. A silver fir given by the botanist Joseph Banks in the 1840s has the largest girth of its kind in the country. In spring the gardens are carpeted with snowdrops, aconites and daffodils. Each March Dalemain hosts the World’s Original Marmalade Awards and Festival, an international culinary event that began in 2005. Entries arrive from places as far apart as Taiwan, Japan, Australia and Lebanon. The festival has raised nearly a quarter of a million pounds for local hospice care and palliative services in the UK and overseas. The gardens also contain playful topiary, including a dragon and a sleeping earth giant, and Lob’s Wood, a leafy green space of beech trees. A door from the formal garden leads into this shady retreat.