Driving to Montacute House

Montacute House is a late Elizabethan mansion with garden in Montacute, South Somerset.

All parts are maintained by the National Trust (NT) which subsidises entry fees. Its Long Gallery, the longest in England, serves as a South-West outpost of the National Portrait Gallery displaying a skilful and well-studied range of old oils and watercolours.

An example of English architecture during a period that was moving from the medieval Gothic to the Renaissance Classical, and one of few prodigy houses to survive almost unchanged from the Elizabethan era, the house has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building, and Scheduled Ancient Monument. It was visited by 125,442 people in 2013. Designed by an unknown architect, possibly the mason William Arnold, the three-storey mansion, constructed of the local Ham Hill stone, was built in about 1598 by Sir Edward Phelips, Master of the Rolls and the prosecutor during the trial of the Gunpowder Plotters.

The house and its gardens have been a filming location for several films and a setting for television costume dramas and literary adaptations.

Sir Edward Phelips' descendants occupied the house until the early 20th century. Following a brief period, when the house was let to tenants (one of whom was Lord Curzon who lived at the house with his mistress, the novelist Elinor Glyn), it was acquired by the NT in 1927.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/montacute-house

(Visited on August 9, 2017)