Whiling Away the Time in Stamford – our quintessential English market town.

PETER VAN BREDA | High Street, Stamford.

The town of Stamford is a Georgian jewel of a place, crisscrossed with charming, cobbledstreets and populated with graceful buildings. We feel so very privileged to call it home to our elegant new gallery. If you ignore the reminders of modern life, the vistas remain untouched by the passage of 200 years. Despite its beauty Stamford is not a sleepy backwater but a thriving, vibrant and busy town filled with interesting independent shops, quirky cafes and eateries, and a delightful place to visit.

Visitors can lose a day wandering through Stamford. The pedestrianised High Street and lanes that lead off, are filled with interesting independent shops and thriving businesses. Cultural life is vibrant too with an arts centre amongst unique institutions and Stamford has it’s very own ‘Poets Corner’ where onlookers can listen to aspiring poets recite from the stone which invites people to ‘Step up and Speak’. Parched vocal cords can then be restored with a drink in one of the many coffee shops, or perhaps a historic pub such as the Tobie Norris whose medieval beams have seen life pass beneath them since the 1280s.

JEANNE SELMERSHEIM-DESGRANGE | Nature Morte devant la Maison

Just as Stamford has wonderful old hotels including The George which was once a coaching house on the route of the Great North Road, so the town is also closely tied to the River Welland on which it sits. The Old Bath House and the meadows around it are reminiscent of a Robin painting in their ageless beauty.

GEORGES CHARLES ROBIN | La Sarthe près du Mans

Few visitors come to the town without escaping to Burghley House on the outskirts of Stamford, a magnificent Elizabethan house which has been irrevocably linked to the town since Sir William Cecil bult it in the sixteenth century. The house is filled with treasures collected by the family over 500 years and the parkland designed by Capability Brown. In many ways it epitomises Stamford itself - elegant, interesting and unforgettable.

GEORGINA POTTER | The Lake at Burghley