61. Montacute Manor.


This truly magnificent Renaissance Manor and estate lies in Montecute in Somerset 4 miles west of Yeovil, and was originally built in 1558 and completed 13 years later. It is registered as a Grade 1 Listed Building, and hence protected from alteration or destruction. It is one of the relatively smaller stately homes of the period but one of its most beautiful. It is regarded by the National Trust as one of the glories of Elizabethan architecture. The name comes from the Latin ‘mons actus’ or ‘pointed hill’ on which the Manor originally set.

It boasts a classic Elizabethan Long Gallery with resplendent Elizabeth art collection. It is built in beautiful yellow/amber Hampshire Hamstone which reflects different magnificent hues as the sun’s rays hit it throughout the day.

It was originally owned by Sir Edmund Phelips (1560-1614) who prosecuted Guy Fawkes and became Speaker of the House of Commons in 1604. As an Elizabethan great house there originally were no corridors, all rooms ran one into the other. Later corridors were added. A magnificent broad great staircase takes you up to the top 3 floors. The Phelips children used to lead their ponies up these same stairs on inclement days to ride them in the Long Gallery which runs the whole length of the house on the 3rd floor. It should be noted that this was the purpose of the Long Galleries in the beginning – to provide exercise when it was raining.

As time they evolved into magnificent libraries and places to display antiquites and other valuables. In Montacute the 189’ long Long Gallery now houses a priceless exhibition of treasures from the National Portrait Gallery. The Phelips family lived there from the mid 16th Century until 1915 when their fortune ran out! It was then leased by Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (1859-1925), 1st Marquis Curzon of Kedleston who spent enormous sums to restore it and lived there from 1915-1925.

When you visit you can explore the Lord Curzon Room that is there as is his secret bath off one of the bedrooms. There is a magnificent paneled library. He disliked the mid-Victorian trappings that had been added over the last century, revealing the original Elizabethan architecture stone and wood of the last ½ of the 16th Century. He collected Elizabethan furniture to fill it. It now represents one of four the major buildings belonging to the National Trust that were restored and given to it by Curzon (Montacute, Bodiam Castle, Kedleston (his birth and ancestral home) and Tattershall Castle). After Curzon’s death in 1925 death it eventually was acquired by the philanthropist Ernest Cook who gave it in 1926 to the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings and then it moved to the care of the National Trust which administers it today. It was the Trust’s first Great House acquisition.

The property is tied to Lord George Curzon in a number of ways. It was here that he waited in 1923 for word he had been selected by P.M. Bonar Law to replace him as P.M., was summoned excitedly to London only to learn that it had been given to Stanley Baldwin. It was also there that his current mistress, the novelist Elinor Glyn (he was a widow) who was living here and working hard on restoration, read in the paper he had become engaged to his eventual second wife, the American Grace Duggan, and in fury left, burned all his letters and never spoke to him again.

There is a magnificent garden, including 2 ‘pudding houses’ in the outdoors. These were used by Tudor and Stuart owners and guests to sit out in after dinner and have their dessert or pudding. The house and estate are often used for movies. ‘Sense and Sensibility’ was filmed there in 1995.

The house, gardens and estate are open for public tours. Contact: telephone: 01935823289, email: Montacute@nationaltrust.org.uk. Admission is 8.40 pounds for adults and 4.2 pounds for children. The great house is open from March 1 – November 9 each year, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 11 A.M. – 5 P.M.