4 Best Sights in Kendal, The Lake District

The region's finest art gallery, and a thriving cultural and community hub, Abbot Hall occupies a Palladian-style Georgian mansion built in 1759. In the permanent collection are works by Victorian artist and critic John Ruskin, who lived near Coniston, and by 18th-century portrait painter George Romney, who worked in Kendal. The Great Picture, a grand 17th-century triptych of the life of Lady Ann Clifford, is attributed to Flemish painter Jan van Belcamp. The gallery also owns some excellent contemporary art, including work by Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, and L. S. Lowry, and the temporary exhibitions showcase the best of British art. There's also an excellent café. Abbot Hall is on the River Kent, next to the parish church. 

Focusing on natural history and archaeology, this grand, old-fashioned museum is a cabinet of curiosities from near and far. The Kendal and Westmorland Gallery includes everything from Mesolithic tools to a Viking boat from near Kentmere tarn. The World Wildlife gallery has a reconstruction of the now-extinct dodo. The museum also hosts temporary exhibitions and workshops with local artists.

An Elizabethan house and the home of the Bagot family since 1590, Levens Hall is famous for its topiary garden, probably the most distinctive in the world. Laid out in 1694, the garden retains its original design, and the yew and beech hedges, cut into complex shapes that resemble enormous chess pieces, rise among a profusion of flowers. The house contains a stunning medieval hall with oak paneling, ornate plasterwork, Jacobean furniture, and Cordova goat-leather wallpaper. You can easily spend a couple of hours here admiring the place or getting lost in the living willow labyrinth. There's a play area for children. Levens Hall is 4 miles south of Kendal.

One of the Lake District's finest fortified houses has a 58-foot-tall tower that dates from 1340, more than 1,600 acres of grounds, and the national fern collection. Expanded in Elizabethan times, the castle includes outstanding oak-paneled interiors with intricately carved chimneypieces and oak furniture. The estate has ancient woodland, and there are good walks here. Sizergh is 3½ miles south of Kendal.