Cragside

You could be forgiven for thinking – for the most fleeting of seconds – that Cragside House grew organically out of Northumbrian moorland, as self-seeded as the yellow gorse and purple heather on the slopes that surround it. With its walls built from fell sandstone, blasted out of the Debdon Valley it overlooks, and encircled by a rugged rock garden, Cragside certainly creates the illusion of being part of the natural world. William Armstrong, who bought the land in 1863, wasn’t looking to create the kind of managed parkland so favoured by his peers. He chose this inaccessible spot – where he had spent