Osterley Park is a country estate inside the M25, begun for the Elizabethan financier Sir Thomas Gresham in the 1570s and transformed between 1761 and 1780 by Robert Adam for the banking Child family into one of Britain's most complete neoclassical interiors, from the Entrance Hall and Eating Room to the Long Gallery, Etruscan Dressing Room and State Bed. The Earl of Jersey gave it to the National Trust in 1949. Around it are 350 acres of parkland with lakes and a Tudor walled garden, free to walk and popular with cyclists, dog walkers and families, and Osterley station on the Piccadilly line is a mile away. Reviewers praise the room guides and the trees, and describe the Stables Cafe lunch as soup, pasties and jacket potatoes rather than a full meal. Tips from visitors: the park and cafe open well before the house, so check the house's later start before arriving, and the car park is 400 yards up the drive with a volunteer-run buggy to the house.
