Wolfeton House is an early Tudor and Elizabethan manor house

Manor house

A manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes...

 in Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It is situated amongst water-meadows north-west of Dorchester not far from the confluence of the rivers Frome

River Frome, Dorset

The River Frome is a river in Dorset in the south of England. At 30 miles long it is the major chalkstream in southwest England. It is navigable upstream from Poole Harbour as far as the town of Wareham.-Geography:...

 and Cerne

River Cerne

The River Cerne is a ten mile long river in Dorset, England, which rises in the Chalk hills of the Dorset Downs at Minterne Magna, flows down a valley through Cerne Abbas and Charminster, and flows into the River Frome in Dorchester....

. It is near to the village of Charminster

Charminster

Charminster is a village in west Dorset, England, situated on the River Cerne and A352 road one mile north of Dorchester. The village has a population of 1,940 . The village has a small church of St. Mary. These two things give the village its name, Cerneminster , which eventually evolved into...

. The compact original courtyard section of the current building dates back to about 1480. Possibly dating back to Roman times

Roman Britain

Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...

, the house has been the country seat of several families, including the Mohuns and Trenchards.

A Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

Dictionary states this house may have been "The Manor-House of the Drenghards" in Hardy's "The Lady Penelope."

Further reading

• Booton, Peter. "Dorset Interiors: Wolfeton House", Dorset Magazine

External links

• Historic Houses Association: Wolfeton House - visiting information