Barrington Court

Infobox Historic building

---

caption=
name= Barrington Court
location_town= Barrington
location_country= England
map_type=Somerset
latitude= 50.9626
longitude= -2.8770
architect=
client=
engineer=
construction_start_date=
completion_date= 1550/s
date_demolished=
cost=
structural_system=
style= Tudor

Barrington Court is a Tudor manor house begun c. 1538 and completed in the late 1550s, with a vernacular seventeenth-century stable court (1675), situated in Barrington, near Ilminster, Somerset, England. It was the first house acquired by the National Trust, in 1907, on the recommendation of the antiquarian Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley. [Somerset Historic Environment Record]

Barrington Court, once dated 1514 [The estate, with a house site that had been occupied since the eleventh century, was inherited in 1514 by Henry Daubeney, created Earl of Bridgewater for his services to Henry VIII, who began the new house but went bankrupt and was involved in the disgrace of Katherine Howard (Somerset Historic Environment Record).] and considered an early example of a symmetrical front, was completed in the late 1550s for William Clifton, a London merchant who had been assembling a Somerset estate. ["Victoria County History: Somerset" iv (1978) pp 112-14.] Its central entry porch leads into a screens passage with the Hall on the left and, an innovation, a service passage leading to the kitchen wing that occupies the right wing. A symmetrically sited gatehouse (rebuilt) was set far forward of the house, to permit a full view of its symmetrical facade. [Nicholas Cooper, "Houses of the Gentry 1480-1680" (Yale University Press) 1999, pp 75-78.]

The interior of the house suffered from its demotion to a tenant farm, and from a fire in the early nineteenth century; after being almost derelict it was repaired under the supervision of Alfred Hoare Powell. Barrington Court was acquired by the trust in 1907 and was leased to Col. Lyle of Tate and Lyle in the 1920s. He and his wife turned the house around and refurbished the court house and renovated Strode House (built by William Strode in the 1600s) which was originally a stable and coach block. It was a this time that the Lyles contracted Gertrude Jekyll to design the three formal gardens on the property that are kept in beautiful condition by the head gardener.

Barrington Court is the only National Trust property with a tenant,Fact|date=July 2008 this tenant being Stuart Interiors who took the lease in 1986 from Andrew Lyle grandson of Col. Lyle (co-founder of Tate and Lyle Sugar). [cite web | title=An Invitation to Barrington Court | work=Stuart Interiors | url=http://www.stuartinteriors.ltd.uk/visit5.php | accessdate=2007-10-15]

Gardens

Barrington Court is noted for its Arts and crafts-style gardens for which garden designer Gertrude Jekyll provided planting plans, [Gertrude Jekyll, "Colour in the Flower Garden" (1908).] which are being used to restore the gardens, laid out in 1917 by J. E. Forbes, of the partnership Forbes & Tate, for Lieut- Col. A. Arthur Lyle, in a series of walled rooms that include a white garden, a rose and iris garden and a lily garden.

The kitchen garden provides produce for the property's restaurant located in the adjacent Strode House this includes all types of fruit and vegetables, the local school at Barrington and Ilton also have a vegetable plot where the children plant tend and cook the produce, the walls are also strewn with apple, pear and plum trees.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-barringtoncourt/ Barrington Court information at the National Trust]
* [http://webapp1.somerset.gov.uk/her/details.asp?prn=55164 Somerset Historic Environment Record: Barrington Court]
* [http://www.stuartinteriors.com/ Stuart Interiors at Barrington Court]