Join

Devonshire manor house, restored and extended in the local vernacular.

Modbury, Ivybridge, Devon, PL21 0TW

Shilstone House

Experience this house

History

Historic Houses members must pay for entrance for this property.
Historic Houses members must pay for entrance for this property.
for the latest information.
Does our information need updating?
Let us know here

The 1086 Domesday Book provides the earliest documentary evidence of Shilstone, and tells us who owned the land before and after the Norman Conquest. Any structures at this time are likely to have been built using local timber and have long since vanished. A high status 3-room house had been erected at the centre of the site by the 14th century and, along with 16th and 17th century additions, was the structure recorded by Benjamin Donn’s 1765 map of Devon’s gentry seats. At this date, the estate was owned by the Savery family who had bought it in 1614, made changes to the house and also created the formal gardens, including terraces, parterres, and walks as well as a unique Italianate water theatre connected to a network of ponds, rills and cascades. The water theatre is the only known example of such a feature in the UK and makes Shilstone of great national importance. In the early 19th century, the Saverys demolished the existing house and replaced it with a courtyard mansion, similar in plan to the current house, but soon after it became a busy agricultural holding and was tenanted well into the 20th century. In 1997 Lucy and Sebastian Fenwick purchased Shilstone and undertook a sympathetic restoration of the house and gardens using the findings of research by the Devon Rural Archive.

The landscape soon began to give up its secrets revealing extensive building work from the medieval period to the present day, much of which had been covered but not lost. Two sets of double terraces, medieval fishponds, sunken lanes and a ha-ha as well as an early walled garden and a courtyard of fine barns separated from the main house by a crenelated curtain wall all hinted to the importance of Shilstone.

The discovery of the only surviving 17th century water theatre and associated gardens confirmed the suspicions and revealed an incredible connection with Hampton Court Palace. Archaeological excavations in the surrounding landscape were also fruitful and revealed a prehistoric presence on the site, possibly dating to the Neolithic, but undoubtedly of second century BC date into the Roman period. The project also uncovered the foundations of a substantial medieval house shown through documentary sources to be the former Domesday manor of ‘Silfestana’.

for the latest information.
Does our information need updating?
Let us know here