British wonders: 16 Lincoln Cathedral

Location: Lincolnshire, eastern England
What’s the damage? £4
Of all of England’s stunning Gothic cathedrals, Lincoln has to be one of the finest. Grotesque and roguish carvings adorn the exterior and interior, with maniacal devils, kings, dragons and hunters leering over the Great West Door and quirky characters hiding out in the choir screen and rafters of the interior.
The Norman cathedral was largely reconstructed during the 12th and 13th-centuries. It’s perched smugly atop a hill steep enough to challenge the most ardent pilgrim, amid a tangle of cobbled Tudor streets thick with half-timbered buildings. Opposite it is an unusual Norman castle – the site of ferocious civil war battles and home to a rare copy of the Magna Carta.

British wonders: 17 Greenwich

Location: south-east London
What’s the damage? Free
You can actually hop between hemispheres in this charming, village-like little enclave of London. For this fascinating World Heritage site has played a pivotal role in how we make sense of the world today: specifically, in how the world at large perceives time and place. It was here in the Royal Observatory that the riddle of longitude was solved, the universal measurement of standard time Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was born and, yes - the Meridian Line that splits eastern and western hemispheres was fixed.
Greenwich is also home to one of the capital’s loveliest parks and some exceptionally grandiose architecture by Sir Christopher Wren at the Old Royal Naval College – not to mention cosy pubs, a bustling market and the melancholy remains of the Cutty Sark, once the fastest ship in the world – now being rebuilt following a devastating fire.

British wonders: 18 Cambridge University

Location: Cambridgeshire, Eastern England
What’s the damage? Varied
This venerable 800-year-old brains trust is a must not only for its academic history but its all-round beauty – packed as it is with exquisite architecture, serene gardens and beautiful river “backs” along which punters wobble and glide.
But what makes Cambridge such an irresistible national treasure, so deserving of its place in our list, is its incredible wealth of stories – recalling everything from the discovery of DNA in a local pub to the birth of the childhood favourite Winnie the Pooh. The university has spawned 83 Nobel Prize winners (more than any other academic institution), 13 British prime ministers and a who’s who of British writers.