Stamford is a maze of historical delights, as JOHN WHEATCROFT discovers on a visit with a theatrical twist.

STAMFORD in Lincolnshire is picture perfect, so that on a traffic-free sunny Sunday morning it looks like a film set.

The small Georgian town, built entirely in stone, is not camera shy. It has often been used as a TV and movie location, most memorably in the early 1990s when the BBC adaptation of George Eliot's Middlemarch was filmed there.

Stamford, a stone's throw from Rutland and Cambridgeshire in the southern corner of Lincolnshire, is one of the finest towns of its size in England. It's the architecture (not just Georgian, but medieval and 17th century, too) that draws so many people here, thanks in part to a preservation order placed during the 1960s. This protected Stamford at a time when many English towns were being destroyed by developers.

If you are expecting to find a historic core of a few streets beyond which lies Anytown UK, you will be surprised to discover the extent of Stamford's beauty. You could spend several hours exploring the elegant, wide streets, and narrow nooks and crannies. Even the recently-built residential areas near the railway station have been carefully planned and landscaped to keep cars parked discreetly out of sight.

Mayor Mike Exton, Stamford born and bred, has never allowed familiarity to diminish his enthusiasm for his home town and to share that with visitors. Anyone can come into the Georgian town hall during office hours and ask to see the impressive collection of civic regalia including a 1460s silver mace, presented by Edward IV.

Opposite the town hall, Truffles Chocolate House is a must for chocoholics... try their Swiss hot chocolate drink, topped with vanilla and cream and you'll never want to eat mass-produced confectionery again. A good number of Stamford's shops are small independents and at the Friday market in Broad Street you will find everything from ostrich-burgers to obscure Sixties British psychedelia.

Stamford is also blessed with wonderful open spaces. You can walk along the riverbank, through meadows in the middle of the town, or sit with your feet in the water watching dragonflies.

From the centre it's only a short stroll to Burghley House. As you enter parkland laid out by Capability Brown, the distant view of the house's towers and chimneys is a romantic sight. Burghley House was built by William Cecil, secretary to Elizabeth I in the 16th century and it has been in the Cecil family ever since.

The guides are real enthusiasts with plenty of anecdotes about the family, such as the 17th century Earl who formed the Little Bedlam Club.

In this league of gentleman drinkers, all the Earl's cronies took the names of birds or animals, so that their anonymity was assured in the presence of disapproving servants. This protection didn't last for ever: the Earl's cunning plan is immortalised in paintings in the Billiard Room, so that, for example, a unicorn lurks behind the portrait of Bedlam-ite Sir Godfrey Kneller.

The house is stuffed full of interesting furniture, paintings, silver and ceramics, but if your tastes are more modern you can spend an hour or two in the adjoining sculpture garden.

Every year Stamford hosts a Shakespeare Festival. The venue, a couple of miles out of town at Tolethorpe Hall, is the only open-air theatre in the UK with a permanently covered auditorium.

On our visit we saw George Farquhar's restoration comedy The Beaux' Stratagem, which is being performed in repertoire with Twelfth Night and King Lear. It's the Stamford Shakespeare Company's 27th season at the Elizabethan hall, which it acquired as a near-derelict property in 1977 and restored over the following 25 years.

The 76 performances will be a remarkable marathon for the company which, eight years ago, became one of the first amateur arts groups to be awarded an Arts Council of England National Lottery grant - almost £500,000. Marketing manager Roger Rix has high hopes that ticket sales will equal last year's record season of 35,000 and, with an increasing number of visitors from throughout England swelling the numbers, he has reason to be optimistic.

He adds: "About 50-60 per cent of people who come return the following year so the more people we get now the more we can expect in future. It's a kind of ratchet effect."

With many of those visitors staying locally, the Shakespeare season generates a substantial tourist income for the area. We stayed at the Garden House Hotel (01780 763339), an 18th century town house in the centre of Stamford with pretty gardens and large, comfortable rooms. It is licensed for weddings and is also an ideal place for small conferences.

John Wheatcroft visited Stamford and the Open Air Theatre at Tolethorpe Hall as a guest of South West Lincolnshire Tourism. Stamford Tourism Information Centre can be contacted on 01780 755611, or visit www.southwestlincs.com

The Stamford Shakespeare Festival (www.stamfordshakespeare.co.uk) at Tolethorpe runs until September 6 (Box office, 01780 756133).

Updated: 08:11 Saturday, August 09, 2003