If you love the National Trust and you’re missing the best of Britain’s beautiful gardens, history and heritage, get outside while staying inside with these National Trust virtual tours. 

Take a National Trust Virtual Tour

Each tour is easy to view and may inspire you to visit the places in due course. Simply click the link at the end of each description and follow the instructions. Each room or garden tour opens in a new window so when you have seen enough you can close the view and return to the National Trust page for that place. 

1. THE 16-SIDED HOUSE WITH A SHELL GALLERY IN DEVON

A La Ronde is a unique 16-sided house in Exmouth, Devon that was built at the end of the 18th-century. The house was built for two cousins, Jane and Mary Parminter who were inspired to commission its unusual structure after a trip through Europe. The cousins undertook much of the internal decoration themselves, including the creation of the stunning Shell Gallery. The A La Ronde estate also comprises the Point-in-View Chapel, a school, almshouses and a manse, all of which are Grade I listed buildings that have only ever had one male owner since being built. 

A La Ronde comprises 20 rooms in all. The ground floor rooms all radiate out from a 35ft-high hallway known as the Octagon. The house features a fascinating combination of unusual styles including distinctive diamond-shaped windows and triangular-shaped cupboards between each of the main rooms and an intricate hand-crafted frieze in the upper octagonal gallery.

Virtual Tour

Take this National Trust virtual tour to see the Shell Gallery, the Drawing Room and the view from the Gantry.

2. THE LANDSCAPED GARDENS OF AN ARISTOCRATIC AUTHOR IN KENT

Sissinghurst Castle Garden, in the Weald of Kent, was created by Vita Sackville-West, the aristocratic novelist and prize-winning poet and gardener, and her husband Harold Nicolson, also an author. The place whispers of a history that goes back centuries and has a deeply romantic legacy that inspired the famous novel Orlando.

Now one of the most visited gardens in England, Vita and Harold purchased the run-down Elizabethan mansion that would become Sissinghurst Castle in 1930 and renovated both the house and garden.

Sissinghurst Castle features several stunning gardens, including the White Garden with its stunning irises, gladioli, Japanese anemones and pompom dahlias, all white; the South Cottage Garden and its array of flame-reds and golden shades, the Herb Garden and the Nuttery.

Virtual Tour

This virtual garden tour features the Rose Garden with its 'tumble of roses and honeysuckle, figs and vines' with an attractive circular-shaped hedge. From here you can also explore the Courtyard and the Library. 

3. THE FORMER PRIORY WITH ECLECTIC OBJETS D'ART IN ANGLESEY

Anglesey Abbey in Wales is a Jacobean-style country house surrounded by 98 acres of landscaped grounds and gardens and a working watermill. Built on the remains of a priory in around 1600, this Grade I listed house contains the eclectic collections of furniture, paintings, tapestries, sculptures, clocks, books, and other objets d'art that once belonged to the former owner, Lord Fairhaven.

The sitting room, originally part of the old priory, dates from the 13th-century as does the dining room which was formed from the monks' day room.

The furniture collection in the abbey includes an Italian Renaissance table in the dining room and a white japanned Chippendale dressing table that once belonged to actor David Garrick in one of the bedrooms. The Tapestry Room features stunning 17th-century tapestries as well as one more modern tapestry depicting Anglesey Abbey with the Fairhaven coat-of-arms that was commissioned by Lord Fairhaven.

The 98 acres of Grade II listed landscaped grounds at Anglesey Abbey are laid out in the style of an 18th-century park and divided into gardens with flowerbeds and classical statues, avenues, vistas and walks.

Virtual Tour

Take the virtual garden tour of the Formal Garden to see its blue and white hyacinths in full bloom, and the Dining Room and Tapestry Hall.

National Trust virtual tours are a wonderful way to explore parts of some of Great Britain's most interesting and historically important attractions.

Words by Kate Thompson.