Alan Titchmarsh reveals the secrets of the Cistercian monks who lived at Fountain's Abbey in North Yorkshire over 800 years ago, and visits its neighbour - the spectacular Studley Royal Water Garden. Anneka Rice is at Mottisfont in Hampshire and Britain's last working water-driven spade mill. Miriam O'Reilly joins a bat watch on the South Downs, and Dan Jones treads in the footprints of Giants in County Antrim.

Alan visits Hardwick Hall, the magnificent Derbyshire home of Bess of Hardwick, to tell the story of how she rose from humble beginnings to become the secondmost powerful woman in Elizabethan England. Continuing the family history, Miriam O'Reilly visits nearby Stainsby Mill, Jenni Bond travels to the copper mines at Ecton and Peter Peter Purves visits Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, where Bess once held Mary, Queen of Scots, in custody.

Alan visits Stowe in Buckinghamshire, the most magnificent landscape garden of late 18th-century Britain and the site of a well-known public school. Pete Waterman discovers the link between Stowe and the Beatles, Dan Jones abseils down Lord Cobham's Pillar at Stowe and Suzannah Lipscomb visits a Norfolk stone masonry to help re-create some of Stowe's iconic statues.