Visit Peckover House is part of my meta bucket list which is to visit every National Trust Property in England. Peckover House is the first one on that list that I completed. I hope that you enjoy this article and follow along as I work on visiting all of the properties in England.
History of Peckover House
Peckover house was constructed in 1722 in Wisbech Cambridgeshire. It was purchased by the first of the Peckovers, Johnathan in the late 18th century. While the Peckovers owned the house part of it acted as a bank and was called Bank House. It was the first bank that was located in Wisbech. The last of the Peckovers gave the house and its grounds to the National Trust in 1948. Peckover House was given Grade 2 building status in 1985.
Visit Peckover House
To be able to look inside Peckover house you need to book onto one of the tours that are ran by the National Trust. If you only want to visit the gardens you don’t need to book. Tours of Peckover House start at 11am and 1pm everyday except for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. There are 12 spaces available in each time slot and each tour lasts for an hour.
It costs either £10 to take a tour of the house and then to visit garden after. Or £5 if you want to only visit the gardens. Of course if you are a member of the National Trust you can visit both for free. To book tickets to the house you need to use this website
The tour starts at an entrance to the left of the main door to the house. A member of staff was sitting on a stool with a list of names of people on the tour. It is possible to have a look what was part of the bank was like while you wait for the tour to begin. The tour takes you through some of the rooms of Peckover House, a sitting room, dining room, the library, some bedrooms and the basement. The tours are no longer allowed to go up into the roof as the stairs have become too unsafe.
I am a bit of a book nerd so I was looking forward to visiting the library. The library is quite an impressive for the size of the house. In fact the Peckovers book collection grew so large they they extended the house and built the current library onto the side. On one of the long walls in the room is full of old leather bound books.
Once the tour of the house is completed you are left to explore the garden on your own. The garden at Peckover is very well established with little winding paths to loose yourself in. I was impressed that such a garden can be found in a town centre, it feels like you enter a hidden world. A popular part of the garden at Peckover is the orangery. It is a little usual to see the in the UK as we don’t really have the weather for it. You can actually see there are heating pipes for the winter time when it cold outside. Some of these orange plants are believed to be over 300 years old.
One odd little thing that I found in garden is this little area in one corner. At first I thought that it was a human graveyard but after reading the inscriptions on the gravestones it is actually a small area for cat graves. Some of the stones are actually quite recent with some in the last five years.
I did enjoy my time at Peckover house. I actually liked the forced tour to see inside the house as the guides do have lots of information that you perhaps would not get if you were walking around on your own. The garden is also quite special especially its orangery.
Useful information
Entry. House by pre-booked tours only 11:00 and 1300 every day except for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tours have 12 spaces each and last for one hour. Tours can be booked here
Garden open 10:30 until 14:00 each day except for Tuesdays and Wednesday.
House & Garden costs £10 or free for National Trust members.
Garden only costs £5 or also free for National Trust members.
Parking. There is no National Trust parking at the property. Chappel Rd is the closest car park at PE13 1RG it is free and has 205 spaces. If it is full there is another car park at Somers Rd at PE13 1JF with 282 spaces.
National Trust Peckover House webpage – Link
Tour booking – Link
Google maps – Link