National Trust - Crook Hall Gardens

Free parking for national trust members. Cafe with delicious cafe , snacks, cakes, Friendly staff.
Beautiful views from garden to the Durham cathedral.
Lots of fruits, vegetables and plant's to show kids. Lovely paths with colourful plants, trees and shrubs, few small fountains😁
Definitely worth the money!!

13th of July 2022. The day when National Trust opened the Garden for public and Durham appeared on National Trust map! This medieval building added another reason to visit Durham.
At the moment the house itself is still closed but you can visit the medieval hall. Not much but still quite interesting building.
To me the garden is a real pearl! There is a couple of sections of this lovely garden. We have orchard full of apple trees, pond surrounded by trees, water plants and beautiful views of meadows and fields. Section with vegetables, berries and edibles is really well kept and impressive! Fantastic features everywhere not omitting this part of the garden.
Small and bigger ornaments and statues are keeping you in "look for" mode. Great abundance of plants everywhere so no room for any single weed! Lovely planned paths with all shapes of benches here and there gives additional reason to stroll and soak in atmosphere and calmness of the place.
The cathedral view is not something extraordinary but still nice as the best place for it is designed as kind of rock plants carpet. I love it!
Coffee and cake available in the spotless café and fantastic staff members ready to help is a cherry on top!

Beautiful gardens. Costs about £8.00 entry but this is worth it because the gardens must take a massive amount of maintenance. You could go every day for a week and still not see it all. National trust seem to be doing a great job.

This place is a real gem. It is only a small visit but it is well worth it. The gardens are lovely, with real variety, we liked the walled garden and the sleeping giant. The Hall is interesting and shows how they were expanded over time from hall to house. Good knowledgeable staff too. Well worth finding, 5 minutes from the centre of Durham.

A lovely place to visit. The gardens are beautiful with flowers, trees and shrubs. Interesting old medieval hall. It has a cafe with indoor and outdoor seating.

I was staying in Durham and whist there I could not miss paying a visit here.

It is my first visit and one I will no doubt return back to at different times of the year. The gardens are beautiful... lots of different areas/rooms with plenty to see in each including a walled garden, a maze, orchard, pools with many seating areas to admire the views.

It is a little gem of a place and well worth a visit.

Beautiful gardens and interesting medieval hall (it's just the hall that you can visit not the rest of the house) . Recently taken over by the national trust. The cafe is very nice - sandwiches, cake, snacks, tea,coffee etc. No hot food yet but is planned for future.

Lovely, but not perfect. Crook Hall Gardens is a delightful little place in the heart of Durham. As picturesque as Durham can be it's nice that you can escape the city to this little Alice of countryside. The grounds, while small have lots of little hidden corners and paths that make exploring a delight.

It's still early in the process of being under the management of the National Trust and you can tell. It's in need of a little tlc in places, after neglect as a wedding venue, the gardens are not as spectacular as other National Trust sites I have visited recently.

While there we was also visited the onsite cafe. We ordered a flat white, 7up, a chocolate brownie and a fruit scone. The fruit scone and brownie were lovely, full of flavour and perfectly baked.

The only downside was the service from the staff. The venue wasn't particularly busy, but the staff member serving me seemed as though they couldn't be bothered. This is very unusual for a National Trust cafe, I have always had fantastic interaction with staff, so this was highly disappointing.

I am hopeful that it will improve in the future, at which point I look forward to giving it 5 stars.

A note on accessibility. The terrain would make it difficult for anyone in a wheelchair to enjoy the premises. The paths are small and a mixture of gravel, grass and stepping stones. An accessible ramp can be used to get up into the garden premises.