Cotehele House Cornwall
Cotehele in the Tamar Valley near Saltash is one of the most important and most atmospherically preserved medieval manor houses in England, a house built primarily in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries that has survived largely without major alteration since the seventeenth century in a state of completeness unique among English medieval domestic buildings. The National Trust manages Cotehele, whose combination of the medieval great hall, the original furniture and textiles and the extraordinary series of tapestries that furnish the rooms creates one of the most genuine encounters with medieval domestic life available at any English country house.
The house was built by Sir Richard Edgcumbe following his support for Henry Tudor's cause at Bosworth, and the subsequent prosperity of the family allowed substantial building and furnishing activity in the decades that followed. The crucial factor in Cotehele's survival is that the Edgcumbe family moved their principal residence to Mount Edgcumbe near Plymouth in the seventeenth century, leaving Cotehele as an occasional retreat that was never subjected to the modernisation that would have removed its medieval character. The tapestries and original furniture that furnish the rooms have never been moved.
The Cotehele Quay on the Tamar below the house was once a busy commercial port and still houses a National Maritime Museum outstation with the restored Tamar barge Shamrock. The Tamar Valley gardens, the medieval dovecote and the mill complete an estate of exceptional variety and historical depth.