The Lakeland Arts Trust runs the long-established Abbott Hall Gallery in Kendal - a Georgian building with a reputation for big-name shows, currently displaying Paula Rego’s Hogarthian recent paintings to good effect. The Trust managed to raise the money to buy Blackwell, line up a big grant from the Heritage Lottery fund, find matching funding, and get in expert architects - Diane Haigh, a Baillie Scott enthusiast, of the young London firm Allies and Morrison - to supervise the restoration and alterations, all in a relatively short time. Work on site began only a year ago, and now it is open. The whole enterprise has cost around £3.3 million. It’s how you’d hope a small, light-footed arts organisation would operate.

What you get are three elements: the restored house as an exhibit in itself, furnished with pieces from the period, and with small sculptures by the likes of Gaudier Brzeska and Epstein (loaned from the Tate) dotted about; new exhibition galleries fitted into the bedrooms upstairs, starting off with a display of some suitably organic ceramics by Kenyan-born artist Magdalene Odundo; and the inescapable tearoom and shop, done in polite-modern style in the former servant and kitchen wing - the only bit of the house which had previously been hacked about, so it was fair game. You also get the restored garden terraces outside with tremendous views.

It’s subtly done, and the real winner is the elusive Baillie Scott. The contrast between the very male main hall with its medieval-revival feel, and the very female white drawing room with delicate, almost Art Nouveau columns - Scott playing Mackintosh at his own game - is alone worth the visit. The farmer in Scott, by the way, would be thankful to find that the outrageously pretty countryside round about is full of real healthy cattle and sheep. So go there, and find a cultured alternative to fell-walking in the rain.

Website: www.blackwell.org.uk - find out all about the house and its history.