The Godolphin Estate is a

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

property situated in Godolphin Cross, north-west of

Helston Helston () is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated at the northern end of the The Lizard, Lizard Peninsula approximately east of Penzance and south-west of Falmouth, Cornwall, Falmouth.Ordnance Survey: ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

, England. The house is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

History

The estate was the seat of the Dukes of Leeds and the Earls of Godolphin. It contains a Tudor/

Stuart Stuart may refer to: People *Stuart (name), a given name and surname (and list of people with the name) * Clan Stuart of Bute, a Scottish clan *House of Stuart, a royal house of Scotland and England Places Australia Generally *Stuart Highway, ...

mansion, complete with early formal gardens, dating from c. 1500, and

Elizabethan The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The Roman symbol of Britannia (a female per ...

stables of around 1600. The present house is the remnant of a larger mansion. From 1786 it was owned by the Dukes of Leeds who never lived there. In 1920 George Osborne, 10th Duke of Leeds sold it to the sitting tenant Peter Quintrell Treloar. After Treloar died in 1922, the following year his wife sold it to James Penna, an agricultural engineer. Penna died in 1926 and his son James Henry lived there until his death in 1935. In that year it was bought C.B. Stevens, a local man, who sold the house and estate to artist Walter Elmer Schofield in 1937. Schofield's architect son Sydney restored the mansion, and received it as a wedding present from his parents. In 2000, his widow, Mary Schofield, sold the wider estate to the

, and in 2007 the Trust bought the house, gardens and farm-yard. The Trust carried out a major conservation project of the architecture of the North Range (the historic front) to prevent it from further decay and collapse. The house is open to the public on certain days. The estate measures and includes Godolphin Hill which provides views over west Cornwall. More than four hundred recorded archaeological features range from

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

enclosures to 19th-century mine buildings. The Trust has been improving public access to the Estate. The large village of Godolphin Cross (sometimes Crossroads), in the parish of Breage, adjoins the estate to the east. Amenities include a primary school.

House and gardens

Godolphin House is located at . Various events are held throughout the year. The house is approached from the north and consists of three wings around a square courtyard and the front wall of a further building on the south side. The main buildings originally stood to the south of this with two projecting wings. One room of the 16th-century remains in the east range; this has linenfold panelling. Opposite the hall range is the Jacobean range; the north side is castellated and has a

loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior Long gallery, gallery or corridor, often on an upper level, sometimes on the ground level of a building. The corridor is open to the elements because its outer wall is only parti ...

of seven bays on the ground floor. Stylistic features here appear to be of the mid 17th-century and suggest that the accepted date for the house of after 1712 is very unlikely. The house is available as a

holiday let A vacation rental is the renting out of a furnished apartment, house, or professionally managed resort-condominium complex on a temporary basis to tourists as an alternative to a hotel. The term ''vacation rental'' is mainly used in the US. Othe ...

for approximately three weeks each month when it is not open to the public.

Historic listing designations

Godolphin House is a

, recorded at the highest designation, Grade I. Three other structures on the estate, the stables, the

forecourt Forecourt may refer to: * a courtyard at the front of a building * in racket sports, the front part of the court * the area in a filling station containing the fuel pumps * chamber tomb forecourt This article describes several characteristic arch ...

walls, and a

blowing house A blowing house or blowing mill was a building used for smelting tin in Cornwall and on Dartmoor in Devon, in South West England. Blowing houses contained a furnace and a pair of bellows that were powered by an adjacent water wheel, and they w ...

used for the

smelting Smelting is a process of applying heat and a chemical reducing agent to an ore to extract a desired base metal product. It is a form of extractive metallurgy that is used to obtain many metals such as iron-making, iron, copper extraction, copper ...

tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...

are also listed at Grade I. A number of buildings on the wider estate have Grade II listings: two sets of gates and gatepiers on the drive to the house, and some garden walls; three buildings related to the tin works, a

counting house Counting is the process of determining the number of Element (mathematics), elements of a finite set of objects; that is, determining the size (mathematics), size of a set. The traditional way of counting consists of continually increasing a (men ...

, a cottage attached to the Blowing House, and a pound which may have been used for the storage of

gunpowder Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, charcoal (which is mostly carbon), and potassium nitrate, potassium ni ...

; and a range of ancillary agricultural buildings; a cider house, a

piscina A piscina is a shallow basin placed near the altar of a church, or else in the vestry or sacristy, used for washing the communion vessels. The sacrarium is the drain itself. Lutherans and Anglicans usually refer to the basin, calling it a pisci ...

and parts of a cider press, a piggery, a barn, a

granary A granary, also known as a grain house and historically as a granarium in Latin, is a post-harvest storage building primarily for grains or seeds. Granaries are typically built above the ground to prevent spoilage and protect the stored grains o ...

, a cart shed, and two sets of farm buildings. The Godolphin Estate is part of the

Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape The Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape is a World Heritage Site which includes select mining landscapes in Cornwall and West Devon in the south west of England. The site was added to the World Heritage List during the 30th Session of the ...

, a

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

Local lore

A custom first recorded in the 18th century, but which may date to the 14th, was enacted yearly on Candlemas day (2 February) until 1921. Godolphin and St Aubyn wagered their respective seats on a race between two snails; Godolphin, losing, pricked his snail which curled up and lost the race. St Aubyn instead of claiming Godolphin's estate imposed an annual custom. The reeve of Lambourne knocked on the door of the great hall of Godolphin Court and demanded to be let in. He would jump on the table and demand 'rents duties and customs'. These were paid in a large quart of strong beer, a loaf of wheaten bread and cheese of similar value and 2s 8d.

References

External links

The Godolphin Estate information at the National Trust

{{Cornwall, state=collapsed Country houses in Cornwall Grade I listed buildings in Cornwall National Trust properties in Cornwall Historic house museums in Cornwall Gardens in Cornwall Grade II* listed parks and gardens in Cornwall Grade I listed houses Breage, Cornwall