Littlecote House is a large Elizabethan country house and estate in the civil parishes of Ramsbury and Chilton Foliat in the English county of Wiltshire, near to Hungerford. The estate includes 34 hectares of historic parklands and gardens, including a walled garden from the 17th and 18th centuries. In its grounds is Littlecote Roman Villa.Littlecote House is a Grade I listed building. It is now a hotel and leisure centre.HistoryThe first Littlecote House was built during the 13th century. A medieval mansion, it was inhabited by the de Calstone family from around 1290. When William Darrell married Elizabeth de Calstone in 1415, he inherited the house. Sir George Darell went on to build the Tudor mansion. King Henry VIII courted Jane Seymour at the house; her grandmother was Elizabeth Darrell.Sir John Popham bought the reversion of Littlecote, and succeeded to it in 1589; he built the present Elizabethan brick mansion, which was completed in 1592. Elizabeth I, James I, Charles II, and William of Orange stayed there, William on his march from Torbay to London in the Glorious Revolution. Popham's descendants, the Pophams and (from 1762) the Leyborne Pophams owned the house until the 1920s. The Leyborne Pophams refurbished much of the house in 1810. They retained it until 1929, when the house was purchased by Sir Ernest Wills, 3rd Baronet.
Tags: Hotel
Address & Contact
- Street:
- Littlecote
- City:
- Hungerford
- Phone:
- +44 (0) 1488 682509
- Category:
- Hotel