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 The History of Hunstrete House
Hunstrete House was part of a former great estate, some 3,000 acres in extent. This ideal location with its ready supplies of wood and water and its sheltered location had been occupied from the earliest times. Stoneage artefacts have been recovered from a nearby wood and there are the remnants of an Iron Age fort on nearby Stantonbury Hill. Roman remains have been found throughout the area, including a villa and coffins at Burnett as well as coins in the grounds of the hotel.
In Saxon times, there was a deer park here and it’s most likely there were associated buildings but no trace has been found of these. In AD 936, Hunstrete was given to Glastonbury Abbey which held it for the next 600 years. The monks didn’t live here but managed the estate, principally for its timber, leasing the land and manor house to tenants. Fish were also farmed in a chain of six ponds that were situated to the north of the present lake. The first documented building is referred to in a survey for the abbey in 1258. It was located in the vicinity of Hunstrete Lake about 200 metres to the north of the present house. A later survey of 1517 alludes to a beautiful manor in a sylvan setting rebuilt in the time of Abbot Chinnock (1375 - 1420).
The abbey lost control of Hunstrete at the time of the Reformation and it passed through the hands of various owners until the beginning of the 17th century when it was acquired by Sir John Popham who was Lord Chief Justice to Queen Elizabeth I. He was extending his holdings in the north of Somerset.
As Lord Chief Justice, he presided at the trials of Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Walter Raleigh and Guy Fawkes.
In the Elizabethan era, the Popham family were the main promoters of colonisation of America, founding the Popham Colony thirteen years before the voyage of the Mayflower. The Pophams held Hunstrete for the next 350 years although it was only their country seat, with their principal residence being at Littlecote in Wiltshire. In the English Civil War Alexander Popham, a general in the Parliamentary army, billeted his troops at Hunstrete prior to joining a large gathering near Chewton Mendip on 6th August 1642. Several musket balls from this period have been unearthed in the hotel grounds.
In 1644, a detailed inventory was compiled of the Hunstrete Estate, a copy of which may be seen in the rear entrance of the hotel. This gives a detailed, room by room, account of the manor in the mid 17th century. It also itemises 21 muskets, amongst other possessions, which may well have been used in the Civil War.
The Popham family commissioned further new buildings at the beginning of the 18th century in the same vicinity as the mediaeval complex. A lease for these also refers to ‘My Ladys Gardens’ and the ‘Kitchen Garden’. All of these early buildings and gardens are no longer in existence, their remains lying beneath the Hunstrete fishing complex.
By 1770, Francis Popham had extended the Popham lands through a wide swathe of England, stretching nonstop from Littlecote, his castle, to the Hunstrete estate, over a day's travel away. He chose the bucolic setting of Hunstrete to conceive a mansion on 'A most grand and magnificent scale', rivalling the most splendid ones then known in Britain. No expense was spared in sourcing the building materials.
The ambitious project remained unfinished at his death in 1780, so his wife Dorothy continued the work until her own demise in 1797. About 1832, General Edward William Leyborne Popham decided the unfinished mansion was an enormous drain on the estate's resources. After a survey, he opted to have it dismantled, apart from the five central arches of the grand portico which were left as a romantic folly (visible from the far side of the garden). Some of the material ended up in the current house and outlying estate buildings and some was sold to Bishop Baines to re-build Prior Park in Bath after the disastrous fire of 1836.
The doorway is an example of materials originally destined for the grand mansion but that were instead integated into Hunstrete's current house. In late Georgian times, a new front was added to the old 17th century building and extensive alterations were also carried out in about 1890. Externally the earliest part of the building is visible from the west side, distinguished by its smaller windows. Internally, a lower floor level and ceiling heights, together with an early staircase, identifies the older core of the house.
The Popham family sold the estate in 1956 and the house was bought by Sir Christopher and Lady Chancellor as a family home. In 1976, it was converted into a country house hotel.
To find out more about the Hunstrete Estate, to enhance your visit or to provide a memento of your stay at this very special place, why not purchase ‘Hunstrete, Truth and Legend’, the story of a country estate. Written by local author, Susan Elizabeth Caola, the book is the result of four years intensive research. It is over 200 pages long and contains in excess of 100 illustrations comprising black and white line drawings by Hunstrete artist Rosemary Murphy, photographs, maps and documents. It retails at £20.
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