Perched above the Tamar valley, in Cornwall, Cotehele is one of the best-preserved Tudor manors in England. Built by a family rewarded for its loyalty to Henry Tudor, it offers the rare privilege of entering a sixteenth-century interior almost intact — frozen by the family's move.
The reward of a loyal man of Henry VII
Sir Richard Edgcumbe had supported Henry Tudor and fought at his side; after the victory of Bosworth (1485), he was rewarded. Strengthened by this favour, he transformed Cotehele into a vast manor arranged around three successive courts, a work carried on by his son Sir Piers Edgcumbe until around 1520. The great hall, with its arch-braced roof (whose timbers were felled around 1500), is its heart: it is the archetype of the great Tudor hall, the place of life and reception of a seigneurial house.
A house preserved by oblivion
Cotehele owes its exceptional preservation to a happy chance. In the mid-sixteenth century (1547-1553), the Edgcumbe family had a new residence built, Mount Edgcumbe, on the coast: Cotehele thenceforth became a secondary residence, little inhabited and little modified. The manor thus found itself frozen in its Tudor state, preserved by the very indifference of its owners. It keeps a rare set of old tapestries, a chapel with an early-sixteenth-century Flemish Crucifixion, and the 'Cotehele clock', reckoned the oldest unaltered domestic clock in England. To see: the arch-braced great hall, the Cotehele clock, the tapestries, the chapel and its Flemish Crucifixion.
Did you know?
Cotehele holds perhaps the oldest domestic clock in England to remain unchanged: an iron mechanism of the fifteenth-sixteenth century, still in its place, without dial or hands originally — it simply struck the hours. That this fragile ancestor of our clocks has survived for centuries owes to the same miracle as the manor itself: the family had forgotten it when they moved.
Notes
Cotehele lies at Calstock, Cornwall (Tamar valley); a National Trust property, house and gardens open to the public. Seasonal hours to check.
Quiz
- Why could Sir Richard Edgcumbe enlarge Cotehele?
- Rewarded after Bosworth (1485)
- He won the lottery
- He stole a treasure
- Why is Cotehele so well preserved?
- The family moved to Mount Edgcumbe, freezing Cotehele
- It was restored in the nineteenth century
- It was never inhabited
- What particularly rare thing does Cotehele hold?
- The oldest unaltered domestic clock in England
- The throne of Henry VIII
- An Egyptian mummy