The History of Hunstrete House

Hunstrete House was part of a former great estate, some 3,000 acres in extent. This ideal location with its ready supplies of wood and water and its sheltered location had been occupied from the earliest times. Stoneage artefacts have been recovered from a nearby wood and there are the remnants of an Iron Age fort on nearby Stantonbury Hill. Roman remains have been found throughout the area, including a villa and coffins at Burnett as well as coins in the grounds of the hotel.
In Saxon times, there was a deer park here and it’s most likely there were associated buildings but no trace has been found of these. In AD 936, Hunstrete was given to Glastonbury Abbey which held it for the next 600 years. The monks didn’t live here but managed the estate, principally for its timber, leasing the land and manor house to tenants. Fish were also farmed in a chain of six ponds that were situated to the north of the present lake. The first documented building is referred to in a survey for the abbey in 1258. It was located in the vicinity of Hunstrete Lake about 200 metres to the north of the present house. A later survey of 1517 alludes to a beautiful manor in a sylvan setting rebuilt in the time of Abbot Chinnock (1375 1420).
The abbey lost control of Hunstrete at the time of the Reformation and it passed through the hands of various owners until the beginning of the 17th century when it was acquired by Sir John Popham who was Lord Chief Justice to Queen Elizabeth I. He was extending his holdings in the north of Somerset. As Lord Chief Justice, he presided at the trials of Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Walter Raleigh and Guy Fawkes.
In the Elizabethan era, the Popham family were the main promoters of colonisation of America, founding the Popham Colony thirteen years before the voyage of the Mayflower. The Pophams held Hunstrete for the next 350 years although it was only their country seat, with their principal residence being at Littlecote in Wiltshire. In the English Civil War Alexander Popham, a general in the Parliamentary army, billeted his troops at Hunstrete prior to joining a large gathering near Chewton Mendip on 6th August 1642. Several musket balls from this period have been unearthed in the hotel grounds.