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Ostentation oozes from almost every inch of this arresting structure – a mash-up of Italianate villa and Scottish baronial pile. It was built at the end of the 1800s for Merton and Annie Russell-Cotes as somewhere to showcase the remarkable range of souvenirs gathered on their world travels.
Look out for a plaster version of the Parthenon frieze, Maori woodcarvings and Persian tiles. Paintings include those by Rossetti, Edwin Landseer and William Frith.
24.23 MILES
England is endowed with countless stunning churches, but few can hold a candle to the grandeur and sheer spectacle of 13th-century Salisbury Cathedral…
9.86 MILES
The massive, shattered ruins of Corfe Castle loom so dramatically from the landscape it's like blundering into a film set. The defensive fragments tower…
19.05 MILES
Durdle Door is the poster child of Dorset's Jurassic Coast. This immense, sea-fringed, 150-million-year-old Portland stone arch was created by a…
24.2 MILES
Magna Carta on display in Salisbury Cathedral's Chapter House is one of only four surviving original copies. A historic agreement made in 1215 between…
9.58 MILES
Dorset's must-see stately home looks every inch the setting for a period drama. It overflows with rich decor, most famously in the Spanish Room, which is…
24.92 MILES
Stately Wilton House provides an insight into the rarefied world of the British aristocracy. One of England's finest stately homes, it's been the house of…
13.16 MILES
The Victorian fort complex at Wight's western tip is home to two gun emplacements where engrossing displays reveal how the site was established in 1862,…
26.39 MILES
Occupying a massive slab of horizon on the southern fringes of Dorchester, Maiden Castle is the largest and most complex Iron Age hill fort in Britain…
0.04 MILES
Some 200 brightly painted beach huts are available for hire. They come equipped with three deckchairs and a gas stove.
0.22 MILES
Bournemouth's sandy shoreline regularly clocks up seaside awards. It stretches from Southbourne in the far east to Alum Chine in the west – an immense…
0.23 MILES
First built in 1908, this historic railway is closed indefinitely – possibly permanently – following extensive damage in a landslide.
0.5 MILES
Built in 1908 to link Bournemouth's steep but relatively low cliffs to the beach, the West Cliff Lift Railway regularly trundles up and down a short…
1.18 MILES
Bournemouth's 1920s heyday is beautifully evoked at a subtropical enclave containing plants from the Canary Islands, New Zealand, Mexico and the Himalayas…
3.4 MILES
A 2-mile, wafer-thin peninsula of land that curls around the expanse of Poole Harbour, Sandbanks is studded with some of the most expensive houses in the…
4.74 MILES
On this small, wooded island in the middle of Poole Harbour, trails weave through heath and woods, past peacocks, red squirrels, red deer and a wealth of…
5.2 MILES
The building alone is worth seeing – a beautifully restored 15th-century warehouse. The star exhibit is a 2300-year-old Iron Age logboat dredged up from…
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