Qualla: Montacute House

Montacute House: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Becks, CC BY 2.0. Sir Edward Phelips needed a house that would announce what he had become. In 1598, when he commissioned the great Elizabethan mansion that still bears his family name at Montacute, he was a senior lawyer and Member of Parliament, soon to be knighted by James I, soon to be Speaker of the House of Commons, soon to be the prosecutor who would open the case against the Gunpowder Plotters in 1606. The honey-coloured Ham Hill limestone going up on his Somerset estate was meant to say all of that aloud, in stone, to anyone passing on the road below. It still does.

Read more: Montacute House on Qualla

Image: Becks | CC BY 2.0

Montacute House: Architecture as Statement

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit xlibber, CC BY 2.0. The architect of Montacute is unknown, although the design is usually attributed to the mason William Arnold, who later worked on Cranborne Manor and Wadham College, Oxford. What is certain is that no expense was spared. The house was built on a roughly E-shaped plan, three store...

Read more: Montacute House on Qualla

Image: xlibber | CC BY 2.0

Montacute House: The Phelips Century

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lewis Potter, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sir Edward Phelips died in 1614. His son Sir Robert Phelips succeeded him and continued the family's political tradition, eventually being arrested at Montacute and imprisoned in the Tower of London for opposing the proposed Spanish Match between the future Charles I and a Spanis...

Read more: Montacute House on Qualla

Image: Lewis Potter | CC BY-SA 2.0

Montacute House: Curzon and the White Elephant

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit bixentro, CC BY 2.0. The end came in 1911, when the Phelips family was forced to let the house for £650 a year and move out. They never returned. By 1915 it had been let to George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, the former Viceroy of India, who lived there with his mistress, the novelist El...

Read more: Montacute House on Qualla

Image: bixentro | CC BY 2.0

Montacute House: England's Longest Long Gallery

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charles Latham (1847-1912) photographer; Gotch, J. Alfred (John Alfred), 1852-1942 book author, Public domain. The most remarkable space inside Montacute is the Long Gallery on the top floor, 172 feet from end to end, the longest surviving Elizabethan long gallery in England. A continuous wall of glass runs the full length of its eastern side, and oriel windows project from each end so im...

Read more: Montacute House on Qualla

Image: Charles Latham (1847-1912) photographer; Gotch, J. Alfred (John Alfred), 1852-1942 book author | Public domain

Montacute House: Filmed, Restored, Reopened

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Dibb, CC BY-SA 2.0. Montacute is a star of the British heritage industry. The 1995 film of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility used it as a setting, as did the 2004 film The Libertine. A Canadian television Hound of the Baskervilles cast it as Baskerville Hall. In 2014 the BBC filmed scenes for its ...

Read more: Montacute House on Qualla

Image: Michael Dibb | CC BY-SA 2.0