Alan explores a French Renaissance-style chateau in the heart of the Buckinghamshire countryside which was a magnet for the great and the good of the 19th century. Clive Aslet visits Flint House, a striking example of modern architecture, on the same estate. Oz Clarke watches the restoration of a precious Dubois lacquer desk, and Alison Hammond visits Polesden Lacey.

Alan visits Southwell Workhouse in Nottinghamshire and experiences some of the Dickensian conditions that the inmates endured. Jenni Bond learns how a workhouse runaway was punished in Lavenham, Nigel Havers visits back-to-back houses for the poor in Birmingham, and at Sutton House in Hackney Angelica Bell discovers the legacy of squatters in the 1980s.

Alan explores Cragside, a unique estate in Northumberland masterminded and landscaped by the Victorian inventor and pioneering industrialist Lord William Armstrong and filled with the most advanced technical advances of his day. Peter Purves visits Castle Drogo on Dartmoor, Miriam O'Reilly walks through the vast Cragside woodland and Angela Rippon visits the Red House in Bexleyheath, home of William Morris.