Woodchester Mansion

Hidden in the folds of a steep, wooded valley within the National Trust's Woodchester Park, Woodchester Mansion is one of the strangest buildings in the Cotswolds. From the outside it looks like a complete Victorian Gothic country house; step inside and there are no floors, no plaster, no glass in the windows — just raw limestone walls, vaulted stone ceilings, and some of the finest Gothic stone carving in Britain.

Work started around 1857 under the direction of William Leigh, a Catholic convert who hired young local architect Benjamin Bucknall — a disciple of the French architectural theorist Viollet-le-Duc — to build something radical.

The builders downed tools in the mid-1860s and never returned. Leigh died in 1873 and the mansion was left exactly as they left it, open to the sky. The gargoyles and over forty carved stone animals are still there, frozen mid-construction, which is partly why they survive in such exceptional condition.

The mansion is managed by the Woodchester Mansion Trust and opens on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and bank holidays from April to November, 11am to 5pm (last entry 4pm). Guided tours run at 11:45am and 2:30pm on open days and are strongly worth taking — the building makes a lot more sense with a guide.

The site also hosts a long-running bat study: Greater and Lesser horseshoe bats, both endangered in Britain, roost here, and the Bat Observatory has live Batcam feeds from the roosts. Access to the mansion is via a walk through Woodchester Park from the National Trust car park, so allow time for that — it is not drive-up accessible.