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Description

Magnificent Elizabethan stone-built house, incorporating National Portrait Gallery exhibition, garden and park
Renaissance manor house filled with historic treasures
Fantastic exhibition of 17th-century textile samplers
Long Gallery boasts Elizabethan artwork from the National Portrait Gallery
Film location for Sense and Sensibility (1995)

Built in the late 16th century for Sir Edward Phelips, Montacute glitters with many windows and is adorned with elegant chimneys, carved parapets and other Renaissance features, including contemporary plasterwork, chimneypieces and heraldic glass. Montacute House works in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery and displays more than 50 of the finest Tudor and Elizabethan portraits from the national collection. These are on show in the magnificent Long Gallery, the longest of its type in England. The partnership also enables activities for families, school and community groups and a programme of tours and talks. The splendid staterooms are full of fine 17th- and 18th-century furniture and textiles, including 17th- and 18th-century samplers from the Goodhart Collection. The formal garden includes mixed borders, old roses and interesting topiary and is surrounded by a landscape park. The wider estate encompasses St Michael's Hill, site of a Norman castle, topped with an accessible 18th-century lookout tower.

Montacute survives as one of the best preserved of Elizabethan mansions.

Its architecture is an exquisite pastiche of Gothic tradition and new Renaissance ideas that were arriving from the continent at the time.

Montacute has undergone major alterations only once in its 400 year history.

During the 1780s a later Edward Phelips grafted a new façade on to the centre of the West Front. He used ornamental stonework taken from another 16th-century house, Clifton Maybank near Yeovil. The stone's carving celebrates the marriage of a Phelips ancestor.

Discover a garden that has moved with the times but remains true to its roots, where Elizabethan stonework is the mellow backdrop to flower borders bristling with colour.

A glittering Elizabethan house, adorned with Renaissance features, including contemporary plasterwork and heraldic glass. Goodhart collection of 17th- and 18th-century samplers. Long gallery with over 50 Tudor and Elizabethan portraits on loan from the National Portrait Gallery. Montacute featured in the award-winning film Sense and Sensibility. The formal garden includes mixed borders, old roses and topiary and is surrounded by a landscape park.