Hunstrete, Somerset
First screened 17 February 2008

The Pophams of Hunstrete House

At its height, Hunstrete House was at the centre of a large 3,000-acre estate. The land was owned by Glastonbury Abbey from 936AD until Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, when it was sold off by the king. The abbey managed and leased out the estate, rather than occupying it directly. Among its ventures during this period was a series of fish ponds located to the north of the present-day Hunstrete Lake.

Sir John Popham
The estate came into the possession of the Popham family at the beginning of the 17th century, when it was acquired by Sir John Popham (1531-1607). A colourful character, who was said to have been kidnapped by gypsies as a child and to have operated for some time as a highwayman, he was Speaker of the House Commons from 1580 to 1583, Attorney General from 1581 to 1592 and Lord Chief Justice from 1592 to 1607. He presided over the trials of, among others, Mary, Queen of Scots, Sir Walter Raleigh and Guy Fawkes. The Popham family played an important role in the colonisation of north America during this period, founding the short-lived Popham Colony in what later became New England in 1607.

Alexander Popham
Sir John's grandson, Alexander Popham, was an MP and a colonel in the Parliamentary army during the civil war – though he subsequently voted for the restoration of the monarchy and made his peace with Charles II (with the help of a 'costlie dinner' at the family seat at Littlecote House, Wiltshire). He organised a detailed inventory of the Hunstrete estate in 1644, which included itemising the contents of every room in the main house.

Francis Popham
There were various building projects on the Hunstrete estate during the 350 years that it was in the ownership of the Popham family, but it was Francis Popham's ambitions for a country house on 'a most grand and magnificent scale' that interested Time Team. Francis, together with his wife Dorothy Hutton, daughter of the Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Hutton, had conceived of a mansion to rival the greatest then being built in Georgian England.

Edward William Leyborne Popham
The project passed to his wife after his death – childless – in 1780. She insisted in her will that their nephew, the army general Edward William Leyborne, should inherit the estate only on condition that he took the name of Popham and that he maintained the still unfinished Hunstrete House. In 1832, however, he commissioned a survey by a master builder showing that it would cost a further £60,000 to complete the house to the original design. He persuaded the estate trustees that it was unaffordable and that the house should be demolished to prevent any further drain on the family finances.

Leyborne-Popham had the buildings dismantled and sold off anything that could be reused, with the exception of five arches from the main portico, which were all that was left standing above ground. Some of the features of the mansion were recycled in the more modest Hunstrete House that stands nearby and is used as a hotel today. Other features, including the grand central stairway, were sold for reuse in the refurbishment of Prior Park, in Bath, after it was burnt down in 1836.

The Pophams finally sold the estate in the 1950s.

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