Sutton Court
| Sutton Court | |
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The rear façade remodelled by Thomas Henry Wyatt in 1858
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| Location | Stowey, Somerset, England |
| Coordinates | 51°20′30″N 2°34′49″W / 51.34167°N 2.58028°WCoordinates: 51°20′30″N 2°34′49″W / 51.34167°N 2.58028°W |
| Built | 14th, 15th, 16th centuries |
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Listed Building – Grade II*
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| Official name: Sutton Court | |
| Designated | 21 September 1960 |
| Reference no. | 1129576 |
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Listed Building – Grade II
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| Official name: Sutton Court Lodge, gates and gatepiers | |
| Designated | 15 January 1986 |
| Reference no. | 1129577 |
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Listed Building – Grade II
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| Official name: Curtain Wall to north of Sutton Court with gazebo | |
| Designated | 15 January 1986 |
| Reference no. | 1136595 |
 Location of Sutton Court in Somerset
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Sutton Court is an English house remodelled by Thomas Henry Wyatt in the 1850s from a manor house built in the 15th and 16th centuries around a 14th-century fortified pele tower and surrounding buildings. The house has been designated as Grade II* listed building.
The house is at Stowey in the Chew Valley in an area of Somerset now part of Bath and North East Somerset, near to the village of Bishop Sutton. The house is surrounded by an extensive estate, laid out as a Ferme ornée, part of which is now the Folly Farm nature reserve.
Since the early modern period the house has been the country seat of several prominent families including the St Loes one of whom married Bess of Hardwick. They lived at Sutton Court and expanded the property in the second half of the 16th century. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries it was owned by the Strachey baronets and their descendants until it was sold in 1987 and converted into apartments. In the Early 1980's the house was used as a film location for the BBC Look and Read series 'Dark Towers', a series very popular to this day in Primary schools.
The original tower of a fortified house, which forms a central part of the current building was built in the 14th century by Walter de Sutton. It was later purchased by the St Loe family of Newton St Loe Castle who expanded the hall, and established a small deer park of around 200 acres (81 ha) which covered the site now occupied by Folly Farm. A length of the original embattled wall, which was built in the 14th century, survives.
G.W. and J.H. Wade, suggest that Bishop Hooper, Anglican Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, found asylum at Sutton Court around 1550 during the Marian Persecutions when the house was owned by the Protestant sympathiser Sir John St Loe, Member of Parliament (MP) and High Sheriff of Somerset. Sir John St Loe was a friend and neighbour of John Locke a philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and widely known as the Father of Classical Liberalism. Locke who lived in Belluton, Pensford approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) from Sutton Court. John St Loe was buried at the local Church of St Andrew, Chew Magna.
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Wikipedia