History

Christmas

Bedfordshire

Central Bedfordshire

This Christmas, start your celebrations with a premium Festive Afternoon Tea and share festive fayre with a selection of sandwiches, cakes and canapés served in our historic mansion house dining room at Wrest Park.

Add on an Afternoon Tea experience with your admission ticket for a festive day out. 

Options available for adults & children, with a selection of festive cakes, traditional finger sandwiches, canapés & treats. Gluten Free & Vegan options are available.

Your afternoon tea table time will be 1 hour 20 minutes, leaving you with plenty of time to enjoy our historic site.

Available from Saturday 22 November - Sunday 21 December 2025, Wednesday through to Sunday. Timeslots available at 12pm, 12.30pm, 1.30pm and 2pm.

Festive Afternoon Tea At Wrest Park

Enjoy the fresh air, pleasant surroundings, and community spirit of Marble Hill with our weekly Community Walk. The experience is led by our volunteers and is free to attend with no pre-booking requirement.

Meet outside the Coach House Café.

Community Walk At Marble Hill

From thrilling action sequences to the enchanting world of Bridgerton, join our friendly guides as they lead you through Wrest Park to discover the iconic locations where some of the most memorable scenes were filmed.

Afterwards, indulge in a delightful afternoon tea in the elegant dining room featuring a selection of sandwiches, savoury bites, homemade scones and tasty sweet treats.

Book via the 'Book tickets' button below with prices starting at £24.95 per adult and £13.95 per child.

Film Tour And Afternoon Tea At Wrest Park

Double Vision brings together two paintings both known as The Guitar Player. One painting, a treasure from Kenwood’s Iveagh Bequest, is signed by the great Johannes Vermeer (1632-75). The origin of the other, on loan from the John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA, remains a mystery.

Philadelphia’s painting depicts the same young woman playing a guitar, but with a number of small differences. Thought to be by Vermeer by John G. Johnson who bought the picture and eventually gave it to the city of Philadelphia, the question of who painted it and when has been the subject of intense debate for the past 100 years.

This new display, marking the 350th anniversary of Vermeer’s death aged 43 in 1675, sees the paintings side by side for the first time in over 300 years.

Double Vision:

Join us at Wrest Park for an exhibition commemorating 80 years since the end of the Second World War and to celebrate the people who worked here during that time.

Discover our history in a temporary display and enjoy volunteer-led talks. The displays will feature information about the WAAFS and links with Bletchley Park, The Home Guard and the Women’s Land Army.

Join us in the Library for free talks on 8, 9, 16 November at 1.30pm.

On 15 November a World War Two Choir will perform in the Dining Room.

Included in admission price to Wrest Park.

Book early and save 15%.

Second World War Exhibition At Wrest Park

Visit our kitchen garden, where we have a selection of fresh produce for sale. All produce is grown by our volunteer kitchen gardeners, and proceeds support our beautiful house and gardens.

Expect to find fresh vegetables, cut flowers, and other seasonal produced.

Our Kitchen Garden is in the northeast corner of the park, by the sports block.

Card payments only.

The Kitchen Garden At Marble Hill

Join Historian Andrew Hann and Curator of Collections Sabrina Villani for a whistle stop tour around the world with the fabulously wealthy Courtaulds. Discover the places they visited on their holidays in the 1920s and '30s, the different modes of transport they used and the people the met along the way, all meticulously recorded within the pages of their illustrated travel logs.

Find out more about their luxury motor yacht, Virginia, launched in 1930, which they used to cruise around Europe and South East Asia, and learn more about what happened to the vessel after the Courtaulds sold it in 1948. The talk will be followed by a short tour round Eltham Palace focusing on objects and features of the interior related to the Courtaulds travels. There will also be an opportunity to see collections objects not normally accessible to the public including some of the illustrated log books and cutlery made specially for the yacht.

This event has been graded as moderate access as the tour will last one and a half hours and attendees will need to walk up a set of stairs to get to the palace. However, the majority of the talk will take place within the Great Hall.

Members' Event:

Chatty Café

First Friday of every month from Friday 4th April - 10am-11.30am.

Join us on the first Friday every month from 10.00-11.30am for a chat and a cuppa. There will always be a volunteer on hand so a chat is guaranteed and there is a free cup of tea as well.

Gainsborough Old Hall has been at the heart of the town’s community for hundreds of years and is the perfect meeting place for locals and visitors alike.

Sometimes the best connections are made over a cup of tea and our Chatty Café days are the perfect way to bring people together.

Chatty Café At Gainsborough Old Hall

Enjoy a landscape walk, led by our knowledgeable volunteer! Learn more about Marble Hill's historic landscape and changes made through time. Please meet outside front of house at 1pm.

Free Tour, just come along!

Landscape Walk

Start the weekend energised with a spot of Community Yoga amongst the backdrop of Marble Hill and it's surroundings! Community based event, meet on the Oval Lawn (Behind House towards River) at 8am.

Community Yoga

Join us for an exclusive experience down Greenwell Pit, a mining pit in its original archaeological state that is only open for access by special arrangement ten times a year. Join expert Dickon Whitewood for a talk on the archaeology and history of the site, then take an exclusive descent into the Greenwell Pit itself, escorted by trained members of the site team.

This tour is graded as challenging access. Descent into the pit will require harnesses and a period of time spent underground in low light, uneven terrain, and surrounding some may find claustrophobic. Maximum weight for the winch system is 300lbs (136kg).

Join us for an exclusive tour inside Framlingham Workhouse. Learn more about the history of this 18th-century workhouse and the conditions inside, including diet and work. Hear stories of some of the inmates' lives, which have been uncovered by our team of research volunteers.

This event is graded moderate access, due to some parts of the tour requiring the climbing of stairs, navigating uneven ground, as well as minimal rest stops. Some of this tour may take place outside, so please wear suitable footwear and dress appropriately for the weather.

Join English Heritage historian Dr Al Oswald at Wharram Percy, one of the best-preserved deserted medieval villages in England, nestled in a remote valley of the Yorkshire Wolds. Over 40 years of pioneering archaeological research took place here, uncovering the everyday lives – and eventual disappearance – of the people who once lived in this now-silent village.

As you walk among the earthworks, Dr Oswald will share the story of this unique site, from its medieval origins to the cutting-edge archaeological techniques used to uncover its secrets.

This tour is graded as moderate access due to uneven terrain and a steady uphill walk back to the car park. This guided tour follows a 1.5-mile (2.4km) route and lasts approximately 1.5 hours.

English Heritage

English Heritage cares for over 400 historic buildings, monuments and sites - from world-famous prehistoric sites to grand medieval castles, from Roman forts on the edges of the empire to a Cold War bunker. 

Through these, we bring the story of England to life for over 10 million people each year. 

Festive Afternoon Tea At Wrest Park

English Heritage

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