jodhpur Review

Great location let down by the River Cottage kitchen, which is a logistical disaster - bring your own, if you want to be sure that food is available!

Beautiful gardens. Nice day out from London. Dog and kid friendly.

The whole area was beautiful, I enjoyed it, everything is maintained.

The house is very interesting and the staff is very knowledgeable on the history and details of the house. The gardens are beautiful. Fun place to visit.

A great place to visit and stroll through the grounds of. A little pricey if you want food.

Always a fun experience to step back into history with plenty of little quirky shops and food. Something for everyone!

Interesting history as Liz 1's pad until her mid 20's. Fab restaurant and gardens to walk in. Curio shops too.

I stepped in with really high expectations but it totally surpassed them. Even if reformed in Victorian times the first room is spectacular. Queen Elizabeth I rainbow portrait is the highlight of a really good art collection. One of the guides told me the nearly untouched Jacobean interiors survived due to the lack of funds to revamp the place in the XVIII by the likes of Robert Adam or William Kent (although there's a chair by the latter). I absolutely loved the visit and the park and gardens are very beautiful.

Well worth a visit well appointed for visitors

Really enjoyed the house and the room guides were very friendly and helpful with some interesting stories and information on the house, history, family, painting, etc. There was also a pretty garden with all the spring planting. Wasn't impressed with the River cottage cafe very little choice and overpriced.

Magnificent country house set in a massive park just close to Hatfield town centre. The house is very well reserved, maintained, hosting many beautiful paintings and historic items. The private Chapel with a stained glass window is particularly pretty. The guides are extremely knowledgeable, friendly and welcoming - we learnt so much about British monarchy and nobility in just one afternoon. Really enjoyable visit.

Beautiful house one of Historic England's treasures, it only gets 4 stars because of the wicked amount it costs for entry.

Had a lovely time, beautiful house and surroundings, well worth a visit,

Privaleged to live locally so get free access to park, including areas not open to general public, all year round. Great place to walk and relax in tranquil setting. Dogs love it.

Good farm for kids to explore pity the train costs on top of admission

Nice pleasant lots of different things to do on the weekend

Really gorgeous house, worth expending some time visiting

Went for the French Market that was being held there looked like a lovely place with lots of land to explore my only criticism is that it could be very expensive to visit the house and grounds

Fascinating place. Would make a great film set for a costume drama. Lots of beautiful & varied artifacts. Great historical interest. Guides friendly & informative. Beautiful grounds with different walks in surrounding wooded area. Ticket covers a period of time where you can go back and go on the walks.

Nice place for walkabout massive fields, with beautiful garden

Amazing historical house and garden. Worth visiting!

Lovely, even in the rain. If you go, plan for a whole day out as there is so much to see.

Beautiful at the moment with bluebells in the woods. Awesome great gallery. Amazing wood carvings. In reality a fairly new historical house compared with others, but very well kept. Nice restaurant. Well worth seeing. A good day out with a picnic.

Please don't relocate your frost fayre again. This year's at Aldenham was not a patch on the wonderful fayre at Hatfield.

Great place... all the guides were very knowledgeable..Many thanks to Victoria malc for spending a lot of time explaining many things in the house & walks in the grounds & surrounding area..

Lovely venue with amazing gardens. Staff are extremely attentive.

Great banqueting Hall with majestic history. Food very good at the Mayor's banquet for over 120 people!

Visited for a food festival held in the grounds. A lovely place, beautiful gardens- definitely worth a visit.

Unbelievably pretty, literally picturesque - it's like our of a postcard. Rose gardens and estate lawns and an exceptionally well kept manor full of fascinating things. Audioguide available.

Unique and quirky but a very quintessential British era mansion

If you live in Hatfield..you can get a pass. Very cheap

Nice place to walk, but it can't be compared with French gardens. Only 2-3 garderns were open for public access. We expected much more.

Majestic and expansive, yet a nice place for an afternoon stroll on a lazy Sunday

Hatfield House is an amazing place for any event , loads of carpark space and the Events Team are lovely to work with !

After seeing Hatfield House used as a location on a film recently I felt I must visit. I was not disappointed. The gardens were amazing, lots of roses and peonies and irises. I'd say they were the best gardens I've ever seen in June. Brilliant lunch in Hugh Fearnley Whitingstalls deli. A lovely day out!

Hatfield house is absolutely one of my favourite places to visit. The building so itself is beautiful with a variety of things to see inside. The guides we have had have all been extremely knowledgeable, welcoming and seem genuinely enthusiastic about educating people about the history if the place. The surrounding gardens are a sight to behold with plenty to explore.

Lovely place to visit for picnic pleasant farm ride for kids & pay playground.

The most beautiful place I have visited in a long time

Stunning venue. We had a staff party next to the venue. Fantastic event and entertainment.

I'm in love with this place. Amazing royal manor. Relaxing park and lovely place where to spend a Sunday afternoon, a must if you live nearby.

Visited many times and was the first country house I visited, so is special to me. Full of history and well worth a visit.

First time I've been able to visit the Old Palace and St Etheldreda's - well worth a visit!

Loved the Winter Dining room especially the 500 year old tapestries which took 17 years to restore to their former glory

Most amazing historic house, which is also a living house!

A beautiful walk through the outer grounds of Hatfield House and through Old Hatfield Village, which is also full of character and charm. The main part of Hatfield House and the grounds are however currently closed down, along with the coffee shop and several other shops. Still a great day trip to do and would highly recommend for people to visit.

Loved it here I don't know why I haven't visited before.

Fantastic place for a few hours with family, old or young. Great play area, farm, tractor rides, mini train, restaurant and toy shop.

I can't really answer for the house as we attended a folk festival in the grounds. Well impressed with the traffic calming outside the venue on the main road, which allowed easy turn left on our way out as well as splitting traffic on the way in. Water points set up. Had a wonderful time, maybe next time we'll visit the house itself

Very nice place for a day out. Well lead tours and good facilities.

Quite expensive for what it is, but you can return to the garden until September foc. Cafe had run out of sandwiches by 13:30 so suggest bringing your own lunch unless you fancy an ok roast; veg was great, pork was rather fatty and yorkshire pudding was overcooked. Could make the house more entertaining for children but having costumes from The Favourite film was good, more information would have been worthwhile. Very good guide at the church full of interesting information and nice kids quiz/challenge there

We showed up here with our puppy and got turned away. Only residents of the area can walk here between September and April, and there are no other parks anywhere nearby. If you want to take a taxi with your pup to an alternative, none of the drivers at the cab rank will take you, and the railway station cafe isn't dog friendly. The estate reception greets you with the whole 'nice but not actually' treatment. There's no good reason for turning people away who only want to go for a walk. It's particularly irritating that it's the only green space for miles so if you go there not knowing all of this, you have no alternative but to go back to where you came from. I can only imagine the estate is quite happy with that state of affairs generally. With the numbers of people who might pay to enjoy the space in the winter time, it's an absolute tragedy the estate chooses to operate this way. We're talking a space that is probably the size of Victoria Park, closed to the public for half the year and with excellent rail links in and out of London.

A superb private tour of the Old Palace and the New one. We also saw one or two items from the Archives of the House. Our guide took us at an easy pace and with short pieces of background information. We had time to savour the many beautiful artefacts which are on display. It has been a place which I have wanted to visit for a very long time and was well worth the wait!

Nice house, but expensive if you pay to see everything. Too many extras to pay separately for.

Magnificent. Well worth a visit to one of Queen Elizabeth 1st's residences.
The house and garden are very well kept

House not as big as some we been to... and the cost was a bit to much

A very interesting place to visit an find out about Hatfield House's story.

Hunting is disgusting. ...shame on you for hosting the 'Game Fair' which will ultimately encourage big game hunting as well as countryside pursuits in the UK.

Absolutely wicked best night out in a long time definitely recommend it

Amazing gardens very peaceful and vibrant atmosphere. Lovely place for a day out

House shut at the moment but booked for gardens and woodlands. Well worth the money and could easily have spent longer here. The woodland was beautiful and tracks lead ro the river. The perfect place for a picnic. Gardens very well managed and beautiful.

Great house to see how things have changed since the 1600s. Also houses various well known paintings. Staff at the house are very helpful and knowledgeable.

Hatfield House is an archetype of English country house architecture of the Jacobean period, and still lived in by the family. The house and gardens have been open to the public for many years, and that has led to a very slick and well-planned management of their visitors (which is very convenient, but you do feel very much like a "source of revenue" from the moment you arrive). The guides/stewards stationed in each room of the house have a lot of love for the building, and take little encouragement to tell you facts as well as their own particular favourite rooms or items in the extensive art collection. A highlight for me is that in the James I room, absolutely all the wall space has been hung with tapestry - exactly as would have been done when the house was built, but then fell out of fashion, so it's rare to see a room presented like this. That the house is still inhabited by the family lends a rounded quality to everything you see (it isn't "curated" so much as collated), although this does mean a lot of the house and grounds are out of bounds. The gardens and park are pleasurable, but fairly unremarkable - the house really is the star.