Description: Originally a Tudor house, Lyme was transformed by the Venetian architect Leoni into an Italianate palace. Some of the Elizabethan interiors survive and contrast dramatically with later rooms. The state rooms are adorned with Mortlake tapestries, Grinling Gibbons wood-carvings and an important collection of English clocks. The 6.8ha (17 acre) Victorian garden boasts impressive bedding schemes, a sunken parterre, an Edwardian rose garden, Jekyll-style herbaceous borders, reflection lake, a ravine garden and Wyatt conservatory. The garden is surrounded by a medieval deer park of almost 566ha (1400 acres) of moorland, woodland and parkland, containing an early 18th-century hunting tower (The Cage). Lyme appeared as 'Pemberley' in the BBC's adaptation of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. (information from www.nationaltrust.org.uk)