The story
Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire has been the seat of the Dukes of Bedford for over four centuries. It began as a Cistercian monastery, was handed to the Russell family after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, and grew into a great country house set in a park where herds of deer still graze.
Its collection is the kind a wealthy family builds over generations. The showpiece is a set of 24 views of Venice by Canaletto, commissioned in the 1730s by the 4th Duke on his grand tour and hung together in a room designed for them, one of the largest groups of the artist's work anywhere.
Around them are portraits by Van Dyck, Reynolds and Gainsborough, and one of the three surviving Armada Portraits of Elizabeth the First, painted to mark the defeat of the Spanish fleet in 1588, the queen's hand resting on a globe. The house is still lived in and privately owned, opened to visitors alongside its safari park.
