Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough (The Buildings of England)

The varied architecture of this east Midland area ranges from the Norman glory of Peterborough cathedral and notable Early English churches to many fine Elizabethan and Jacobean mansions. The finest of these is Houghton House but the most spectacular is Burghley, of palatial proportions in a perfect landscape setting by Capability Brown. Southill and Woburn Abbey display the range and excellence of Georgian houses and landscaped gardens while Wrest Park and Luton Hoo look back to eighteenth-century French architecture from opposite ends of the nineteenth-century. More recently, Whipsnade Zoo exemplifies fine work of the 1930s by Berthold Lubetkin.