Chavenage House
Favoured by film crews, an Elizabethan family home built of Cotswold stone.
Tetbury, Gloucestershire, GL8 8XP
Disabled Access.
Chavenage is an Elizabethan building retaining many of its original features (dating from before 1576). As a result, there is unfortunately no wheelchair access, and there are steps and uneven floors throughout the house.
Health and Safety Advice.
In the gardens there are uneven surfaces, non-edible plants, low branches, and slippery surfaces in wet weather. In the building there are some steep stone steps, low doorways, uneven and slippery floors, and other steps not immediately obvious. Children should always be accompanied while visiting Chavenage.
The earliest recorded owner of Chavenage was Princess Goda, the sister of Edward the Confessor, however there are records of Chavenage Green being the meeting place of the Hundred Court early in the ninth century. In the troubled times prior to the successful Norman invasion, Earl Godwin (Goda’s husband), and former friend of the King, gathered a regiment together at a point on the estate, still known today as Longtree Bottom, with the purpose of confronting his brother-in4aw Edward, at Gloucester. The Earl Godwin, and his sons controlled much of southern England at this time and in 1054 had his headquarters at Beverstone. The Godwin family resented the King’s Norman advisors and wished to make him see sense; fortunately a compromise was reached and no fighting ensued.
After the Conquest a community of Augustinian monks from Tours in France settled at Horsley, which since Anglo-Saxon times had encompassed Chavenage. Shortly after, however, the Abbot of Bruton, Somerset, was given authorisation to transfer some French property to the Augustinian Order in exchange for the Manor of Horsley and surrounding lands. Thus an English Community was established at Horsley in the late eleventh century.
Disabled Access.
Chavenage is an Elizabethan building retaining many of its original features (dating from before 1576). As a result, there is unfortunately no wheelchair access, and there are steps and uneven floors throughout the house.
Health and Safety Advice.
In the gardens there are uneven surfaces, non-edible plants, low branches, and slippery surfaces in wet weather. In the building there are some steep stone steps, low doorways, uneven and slippery floors, and other steps not immediately obvious. Children should always be accompanied while visiting Chavenage.