Rocks By Rail Living Ironstone Museum - 4 Things to Know Before Visiting

An ideal place to See birds of prey close at hand and watch them in flight, it is the centre’s aim to provide as natural a setting as possible for the owls, hawks, falcons, buzzards, eagles and even vultures. Explore the natural woodland trails around ponds and purpose-built wild bird feeding stations, see different nesting boxes and enjoy the sound of the countryside birds.

Barnsdale Gardens, in Rutland, is Britain's largest collection of individually designed gardens designed by Geoff Hamilton, who presented BBC Gardener's World from 1979 until his death in 1996. Its award-winning collection of 38 individually themed garden ‘rooms’ will delight and inspire any gardener or garden-lover. It now covers 8 acres, comprising 37 individual gardens and features.

Cutts Close Park is the largest park in Oakham and used to be the ponds and garden area of Oakham Castle. It’s a heritage site, in the centre of which is a bandstand. After the Queen’s jubilee in 2012, it was renamed Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Bandstand. The flowers around it are tended by Oakham’s very own Oakham in Bloom.

Oakham Castle is one of the finest surviving example of domestic Norman architecture in Europe. It was built between 1180 and 1190. The surviving structure is the impressive Great Hall of the Castle, where banquets and courts would have been held. Inside the Castle you can see 240 presentation horseshoes hanging on the walls, given to the Lord of the Manor by royalty and peers of the realm on their first visit to Oakham.

Rutland County Museum features exhibits related to: social history, archaeology, law and order, coins and medals, agriculture, archives, personalities and toys and hobbies. The museum, opened in 1969, houses a collection of objects relating to local rural and agricultural life, social history and archaeology. Temporary exhibitions are shown alongside the permanent displays. Admission to the museum is free.