Wollaton Hall, finished in 1588, is one of the great prodigy houses of the Elizabethan age — a four-square stone confection by the mason-architect Robert Smythson (also responsible for Hardwick Hall) topped with a central prospect tower and a riot of strapwork. The hall was built by Sir Francis Willoughby on the profits of his nearby coal mines and was meant from the start as a statement of conspicuous wealth.
The hall now houses Nottingham's natural history museum, which sounds dry but is in fact a fantastically old-school collection of stuffed birds and animals — including a famously enormous giraffe and a Victorian zebra — packed into rooms that haven't been seriously redecorated in a hundred years. The 500-acre deer park outside is open free to the public; the resident red and fallow deer wander right up to the hall walls. Bus 30 from the city centre takes about 20 minutes.