Winter at Sizergh

Picture the scene: you arrive at Sizergh's grand doors. It’s Christmas Eve, and you're clutching a festive invitation from the Strickland family in your hands. Greeted with the hustle and bustle of preparations, there’s still much for the servants to do. Deliveries of festive goodies arrive by the crateload; a freshly felled Norway Spruce lays horizontal surrounded by boxes of handmade decorations waiting to adorn it; and somewhere in the house there’s an exotic feathered beast, set to cause havoc in the kitchen. 

Book tickets to Winter at Sizergh now. 

The Inlaid Chamber at Sizergh

The Inlaid Chamber features some of the finest-quality, and most visually striking, Elizabethan joinery to survive in the north of England. A rare masterpiece of heraldic stained-glass windows, ornate plasterwork and elaborate inlaid panelling, it was a sign of the political aspirations and wealth of Sizergh’s original Tudor owners.

Flemish tapestries in the Library

The Library houses a set of rare wall hangings depicting The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra – based on the famous stories of Plutarch, and later, Shakespeare. They are the largest surviving examples from this series in the world. In 2018, we were successful in our bid to fund the tapestry considered to be in most urgent need, The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra. The funding was allocated, with a gift from a will providing the funding to kick off the project. 

The tapestry was away for two years, undergoing extensive restoration including cleaning, restitching, relining, and specialist treatment to restore its colour. It returned to Sizergh in 2022, and now hangs in pride of place in the Library.

None of this work would have been possible without a generous gift in will, which provided funding for the early stages of the restoration project. We are also hugely grateful to the Wolfson Foundation, who kindly supported the later stages which saw the project completed.