Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire

National Trust.
The medieval house is built around three sides of a courtyard, and surrounded by a moat. Grey walls with mullioned windows fall sheer to the water, and there are tall red-brick Elizabethan chimneys towering above the roofs. The small panelled rooms, filled with mostly seventeenth and eighteenth-century oak furniture, are intimate and homely. The Ferrers family was Catholic, which is why they never had the funds to radically alter and improve the house. Three priest hiding places can still be seen within the manor house.
Today, the moated setting is striking, and the visit begins by walking the bridge across the moat. The tour continues through various rooms around the courtyard garden, both downstairs and upstairs, and including a look at the priest holes, one of them low down in a former sewer. A notable room is in the gatehouse above the passage. There are some pleasant gardens, both in the courtyard and in the grounds surrounding the moat. My visit included an hour-long guided tour of the grounds around the moat, which while not obligatory does provide visitors, particularly those who didn’t buy the guidebook, with some extra information about house and grounds.
Note that Packwood House (NT) is close by, and it is possible to fit in visits to both in one day.