Wightwick Manor

Wightwick (pronounced 'Wittick') is what happens when a paint manufacturer's fortune meets Oscar Wilde. In 1884 Theodore Mander of Mander Brothers attended Wilde's Wolverhampton lecture on 'The House Beautiful,' took notes, and with his wife Flora set out to live it. Architect Edward Ould built them an 'Old English' timber-framed manor in two phases — the family wing in 1887, the Great Parlour wing in 1893 — that looks Tudor but is pure late Victorian.

Inside is the most complete Arts and Crafts interior in England: original Morris & Co. wallpapers, fabrics, and furniture throughout, hand-painted tiles by William De Morgan, stained glass by Charles Kempe, and a Pre-Raphaelite collection — Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Millais, Evelyn De Morgan — that the family kept adding to. The house also holds work by 11 professional female artists, more than any other National Trust property.

In 1937 Theodore's son Geoffrey Mander, then an MP, persuaded the National Trust to accept a house only fifty years old — a relic, then, of an unfashionable era. It was a visionary gift: Wightwick is now Grade I listed and the essential pilgrimage for anyone who wants to see the Aesthetic Movement not in a museum case, but on the walls where it was lived.