Paunton Court and Vineyard

Paunton and the Frome Valley is set in Herefordshire’s superb farming land. There is substantial evidence of pre-Roman and Roman appreciation of this fact with many archaeological finds up and down the valley. However, the origins of Paunton Court can be traced back to the Saxon period as the principal estate in the manor of Stanford Regis, a land-holding carved out by the Mercian kings in the early 8th century. Until c.1196, it was a royal manor and was then granted to the Pantulfs, a distinguished Norman baronial family who name, anglicised as “de Paunton”, was then applied to the estate. By the end of the 15th Century, Paunton was a substantial manor house with its own chapel at the centre of the estate.

Several families have left a particularly distinctive mark on the property,. The Downes family who hailed form East Anglia were probably responsible for building the earliest parts of the present house in the 16th century. They had considerable wealth, holding property in Norfolk, Suffolk and London but were staunch Catholics and so subject to accusations of treason, periodic imprisonment and financial penalties. Perhaps the rural remoteness of Paunton served as a handy bolthole for the family in those dangerous times.

The Wight family occupied the Paunton from the Restoration in 1660 until the mid-19th century. They remodelled the house and added extensively to the surrounding buildings during their tenure, which have remained largely the same through to the present day. It was the Wights who appear to have started the hop-growing at Paunton which continued through to the late 20th century.

The Lock family held the property through the 2nd World War but the sole son was killed at the battle of El Alamein in 1942 and Walter, his father, died in 1943. His wife, Sarah Lock, carried on until 1952 and then sold the estate to the Fowler family. The Fowlers farmed Paunton until the 1990s when the Longmans took it on and established the vineyard. In 2005, the Falconer family arrived and carry on the vineyard!