With its picturesque domes, walls of pale pink sandstone and splendid Dumfriesshire setting, Drumlanrig is one of Scotland’s most romantic castles, its story entwined with that of the country itself. Finished in 1689, its North Front is a stunning stage set of dressed stone, classical pilasters and carvings of swags, scrolls and spooky faces.

Boughton, the Duke of Buccleuch’s Northamptonshire home, was transformed from a Tudor manor into ‘the English Versailles’ by Ralph, 1st Duke of Montagu, Charles II’s envoy to Louis XIV. It houses splendid portraits of Elizabeth I, Charles II's son the Duke of Monmouth, another Buccleuch ancestor, and Shakespeare’s muse, the Countess of Southampton.