History of Great Chalfield Manor

Expert curated

A view across the moat of the front and forecourt of Great Chalfield Manor, a medieval manor house in Wiltshire, with blue sky and low sun shining on the warm stone. — The north front across the moat and forecourt of Great Chalfield Manor. | © National Trust Images/Andrew Butler

Great Chalfield Manor, Wiltshire, appears to be a timeless place; an ancient manor house in a secluded countryside setting. In fact, it has seen significant change. Originally built by a wealthy merchant and lawyer in the 1400s, it changed hands many times over the centuries, before being lovingly restored and furnished by Robert and Mabel Fuller in the early 20th century.

Early history

The core of the present Great Chalfield Manor was built by Thomas Tropnell (c. 1405–88), a largely selfmade man who amassed influence and wealth as a lawyer, politician and merchant. He worked for the Hungerford family but managed to remain unscathed during the period of civil war in England known as the Wars of the Roses (1455–87), while gradually increasing his land holdings in Wiltshire. Between 1467 and 1480, Thomas built a new manor house at Great Chalfield, probably on the site of an older house, using stone from a quarry in nearby Hazelbury.

Reflecting the turbulence of the times, the house was initially protected by a moat and a high outer wall with semicircular bastions. The north or entrance front survives as originally built. This clearly shows the layout of the house, with a high-roofed Great Hall in the centre. An ornamented oriel, or bay window, indicates the Great Chamber on the left, while another oriel window lights the principal family apartment on the right.

The overall design of the house goes back to the medieval period. In a departure from earlier practice, however, the family no longer ate together with their household in the Great Hall, but took their meals in the more private Parlour, now the Dining Room. The Great Hall, rather than being left open to the rafters, as was common at the time, was given a coffered ceiling with painted timbers, gilded heraldic bosses and plaster ribs and knops in all eight panels – the earliest known example of decorative plasterwork in England.

A view of the Great Hall at Great Chalfield laid out as a sitting room, with a tapestry and deer heads on the wall, a sofa in front of the lit fire and a dining table. — View towards the screens in the Great Hall at Great Chalfield Manor | © National Trust Images/Nadia Mackenzie

A succession of owners

During subsequent centuries, Great Chalfield had a number of different owners. Thomas’s son Christopher Tropnell probably added the service wing to the west of the house. In 1553 Great Chalfield was inherited by Ann Tropnell, who was married to John Eyre (d. 1581), a Member of Parliament for Wiltshire and Salisbury. The Eyre family lived at Great Chalfield until the period of the British Civil Wars (1642–51), during which a Parliamentary garrison stationed at the house was briefly besieged by Royalist troops.

In 1711 Great Chalfield was inherited by Rachael Baynton (1695–1722), who married William Pierrepont, Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull (c. 1665–1726), and then passed on to their son Evelyn, 2nd Duke of Kingston-upon Hull (1711–73). Although Great Chalfield was only a small part of the vast Pierrepont estates, the letter ‘K’ under a ducal coronet does survive on a barn built in the farmyard in 1752. The Duke married his bigamous mistress Elizabeth Chudleigh in 1769, the same year that he sold Great Chalfield to the wealthy cloth merchant Robert Neale (1706–76) for £15,000.

The 19th century

In the early 19th century, Admiral Sir Harry Burrard Neale (1765–1840) and his wife Grace Elizabeth (Robert Neale’s granddaughter, c. 1775–1855) commissioned the artist John Chessell Buckler to paint six watercolours of the house and the adjacent church. They also encouraged the architect Thomas Larkins Walker make an illustrated survey of the house. This reflected the growing interest in medieval architecture characteristic of the early 19th-century.

In 1840 Great Chalfield passed to the Rev. Sir George Burrard (1769–1856), together with the family’s other estates and the baronetcy. Sir George’s first wife, Elizabeth Anne Coppell (1786–1815), brought with her an inheritance of more than £30,000. This wealth came from her father, William Coppell, who had owned sugar plantations worked by enslaved people in Jamaica.

Photo of a watercolour painting of the north west front of Great Chalfield House, Wiltshire, sketched by J.C. Buckler, August 1823. — Watercolour of the north front of Great Chalfield Manor by J.C. Buckler, 1823 | © National Trust Images/ David Cousins

Garden design

In 1907 Robert commissioned the landscape painter and garden designer Alfred Parsons to work on the garden. Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, Alfred aimed to be true to the spirit of the place and its history. He retained the late medieval lawn or ‘pleasance’ but surrounded it with deep flower borders. Alfred also planted pairs of yews which have since grown together into a ‘house’. The boundary walls were given roll-top coping based on the adjoining churchyard and he created dry-stone walls to turn sloping banks into terraces. Alfred added a black mulberry, his favourite tree, to the existing walnuts and medlar. He deliberately planted native flowers in formal arrangements near the house, and more informally on the terraces.

National Trust ownership

The Fullers gave the manor house, the garden and part of the estate to the National Trust in 1943. The house is still lived in, and the garden maintained, by their grandson and his wife, Robert and Patsy Floyd.

In 2025 the National Trust acquired additional land from the Floyd family to secure Great Chalfield’s countryside setting. It also entered into a partnership with the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and the Great Western Community Forest to further develop the estate as a centre for regenerative farming and agroforestry.

Areas A-Z

Things to do

Place types