The Vyne
Local highlightAn early Tudor country house of red brick near Basingstoke, with an old chapel, a classical portico and quiet grounds, run by the National Trust
Open to visitorsa National Trust place — check opening times and admission before you go
The Vyne began as a grand red-brick house in the early 1500s, built for William Sandys, a courtier who rose to be Lord Chamberlain to Henry VIII; the king is said to have stayed here more than once. Two things inside stand out: the Tudor chapel, with early Renaissance stained glass among the best of its date in the country, and the classical portico added to the garden front in the 1650s, one of the first of its kind on an English house. The grounds are the easy pleasure now — lawns running down to an ornamental lake, woodland and wetland walks, and birds on the water. A Roman gold ring found in the fields nearby, now kept at the house, has been linked, mostly in popular retelling, to J. R. R. Tolkien and the ring in his stories. The Vyne sits north of Basingstoke on the edge of the North Wessex Downs; the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum at Silchester, with its grassy amphitheatre, is a few miles north.
