Abbot Hall

Abbot Hall Review

One of the region's finest art galleries, Abbot Hall occupies a Palladian-style Georgian mansion built in 1759. In the permanent collection are works by Victorian artist and critic John Ruskin, who lived near Coniston, and by 18th-century portrait painter George Romney, who worked in Kendal. The gallery also owns some good contemporary British art and mounts a changing calendar of high-profile exhibits of 20th- and 21st-century art. There's an excellent café. Abbot Hall is on the River Kent, next to the parish church. The Museum of Lakeland Life, with exhibits on blacksmithing and wheelwrighting and a wonderful re-creation of a period pharmacy, is in the former stable block of the hall, on the same site.