Baynton House

Baynton House is a Grade II listed[1] 17th-century country house at Coulston, Wiltshire, England, about 5 miles (8 km) northeast of the town of Westbury.

Originally owned by the Godolphin family, after the death in 1781 of William Godolphin it was bought by William Evelyn, who enlarged what had been previously a house 'of very small pretensions'.[2] William Long purchased it in 1796 after his own manor house of Baynton in Edington had been destroyed by fire. He also made alterations and renamed it Baynton House. Parts of the rear of the house probably date from the first building of c.1658, and in the hall there is re-used panelling of the same era. In the late 18th century, the east front of the house was built; it is of five bays and two stories, with a central Doric porch. A somewhat later addition is the south wing.[3] Constructed of rendered brick, the house sits in parkland, with its own lake.

John Long of Monkton Farleigh (nephew of Richard Godolphin Long) inherited the property after the death of the widow of his cousin William Long in 1822, who had left it at her disposal. In 1830, 365 Roman coins known as the Baynton Hoard were dug up in the grounds,[4] 101 of which are now kept in the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes. John Long sold the property in 1842, and it subsequently passed to Simon Watson Taylor of Erlestoke, from whose heirs it was bought by G. S. H. Pearson about 1915.

There was a walled kitchen garden some 3⁄4 mile (1.2 km) to the east, near the village of Erlestoke. The War Office bought the site in the 1930s and in 1991 it became the home of Erlestoke and Coulston Cricket Club.[5]

The house was sold by R. H. Pearson in 1964 for £25,000. A book named after the house was published in 1955, written by Pearson. The book chronicles the story and lives of the Pearsons who lived at Baynton House.

The house is still a private residence.

References
  1. "Baynton House". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 5 October 2008.
  2. Land Tax Assessments; Soc. Antiq. Jackson MSS
  3. 'East Coulston', A History of the County of Wiltshire: Volume 8: Warminster, Westbury and Whorwellsdown Hundreds (1965), pp. 234-39. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=16112. Date accessed: 15 May 2007.
  4. Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, vol. 35 (1908) pp. 132–145
  5. "History" (PDF). Erlestoke & Coulston Cricket Club. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 August 2016. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
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