While the back pages of the British Council publication Historic Houses, Castles and Gardens offer the opening times of Hughenden Manor, Oxburgh Hall, Alnwick Castle and Castell Coch, the information, according to historian and biographer Simon Jervis, gives "no claims to completeness," and furthermore, "nothing but illusion of the whereabouts and reception of such places." Instead, as Jervis continues, we find "the basic system of aristocratic invitation" to be the fallacy of extensive exhibitionism and personal showmanship - an archaic rule, in simpler terms, of the many visiting the few; an absent few and "the few that will never appear."

In Thomas Kendall's readings of the subject, we find both discrepancy and impossibility. Firstly, in the matter of mapping and the case of Oxburgh Hall, which lies, by the publication, west of Sharrock at the crossroads of Highbridge Road and Knebworth Road - an impossibility by the distance (at minimum, 960 yards) between the two roads and their parallel, diagonal paths from south-west to north-east. Secondly, in the matter of transport and the opening hour, by the publication, of 8am at Castell Coch, an impossibility due to the restrictions of Dundas Bridge and the closure by commercial rule of Colway Road and Tanfield Way.

The publication also includes two entries from The Diary of a Country Person 1852-1902 by John Beresforde and one entry from The Formation of the Young England Group by Edward Buckton, detailing, as Kendall observes, all aspects of three personal invitations by Daniel Maclise to Hughenden Manor "save the various conditions of each visit." We find, without exception, nothing of the paths taken by either Beresforde or Buckton, and nothing but the short openings of "Upon arrival," "Once at Hughenden Manor," and "From the gates of Hughenden Manor."