Whittington Court

About

Whittington Court is a small Tudor manor house with Jacobean and later additions, set in beautiful Cotswold countryside five miles east of Cheltenham. The present house, believed to sit on the site of a much earlier Manor, was probably started by Richard Cotton of Carmarthen, with later additions built by subsequent generations of the Cotton family who held the house through the 16th and 17th Centuries.

Visitors to the house today are able to see most of the main rooms including the dining hall which is the most complete part of the early house with its four-centred arch chimneypiece of around 1590 and the library in the east wing with its elaborate and ambitious Renaissance fireplace. The massive oak staircase, dating from before 1637 with its rare early dog gate, gives access to the first floor of the east wing, originally conceived as a long gallery but now divided into a series of smaller sitting rooms. On the first floor landing, visitors can see some of the house’s collection of embroidered silk and block-printed 18th-Century dresses while the textile studio of the house’s owner, Jenny Stringer, is also open at this level.

The house contains some interesting furniture, notably the trio of Regency library bookcases, as well as collections of glass, ceramics, textiles, minerals and fossils, Egyptian artefacts and books, including a collection of books by The Whittington Press.

The site also includes a Tithe Barn (grade II*) built by Ralph Cotton in 1614, the Stables (grade II*) and St Bartholomew’s Church which dates from the 12th Century.