Port Eliot | |
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Location | St Germans, Cornwall, England |
Coordinates | 50°23′49″N4°18′34″W / 50.39706°N 4.30931°W |
Listed Building – Grade I | |
Official name | Port Eliot House |
Designated | 21 July 1951 |
Reference no. | 1140516 |
Official name | Port Eliot |
Designated | 11 June 1987 |
Reference no. | 1000426 |
Port Eliot in the parish of St Germans, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, is the ancestral seat of the Eliot family, whose present head is Albert Eliot, 11th Earl of St Germans.
Port Eliot comprises a stately home with its own church, which serves as the parish church of St Germans. An earlier church building was Cornwall's principal cathedral. The house is within an estate of 6,000-acre (2,400 ha) which extends into the neighbouring villages of Tideford, Trerulefoot and Polbathic. Both house and garden are Grade I listed. [1]
Originally built as a priory with adjoining St Germans Priory Church, parts of the house date back to the 12th century. It was substantially altered and remodelled in the 17th and 18th centuries by noted architects, including Sir John Soane.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Eliot family invested substantially in the estate, building numerous farmhouses, fishermen's cottages and other dwellings across the land. Many of these remain part of the estate to this day, and they are rented out to local residents and friends of the family. Some properties, mainly lying remote from the estate, have been sold in recent years. In 2014, the 700-hectare estate was purchased by the Duchy of Cornwall.
In 1980 a small festival which had outgrown its site at Polgooth in mid-Cornwall approached the Port Eliot estate and asked if it could be held in the idyllic grounds. The estate office agreed a price, and there began the Elephant Fayre, one of the most eclectic festivals of the 1980s. The festival ran from 1981 to 1986, beginning with some 1,500 visitors over four days, and featured a mix of music, theatre and visual arts. Over the years the festival grew, attracting crowds of up to 30,000 and bands such as The Cure, The Fall and Siouxsie and the Banshees. The burning down of the oldest tree in the park, looting of the village surgery and the robbing of stall-holders in 1985 prompted Lord Eliot and fellow organisers to make the 1986 festival the last.
In 2003 Lord St Germans began the Port Eliot Lit Fest. [2] Which carried on as Port Eliot Festival until 2019. [3]
In March 2008 the house and grounds opened to the public for the first time, [4] for 100 days, and attracted 12,000 visitors. There is a shop and cafe with gardens open all year round. Guided tours of the house are available. [1]
Ewenny Priory, in Ewenny in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, was a monastery of the Benedictine order, founded in the 12th century. The priory was unusual in having extensive military-style defences and in its state of preservation; the architectural historian John Newman described it as “the most complete and impressive Norman ecclesiastical building in Glamorgan”. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, parts of the priory were converted into a private house by Sir Edward Carne, a lawyer and diplomat. This Elizabethan house was demolished between 1803-1805 and replaced by a Georgian mansion, Ewenny Priory House. The house is still owned by the Turbervill family, descendants of Sir Edward. The priory is not open to the public apart from the Church of St Michael, the western part of the priory building, which continues to serve as the parish church for the village. The priory is in the care of Cadw and is a Grade I listed building.
Edward Craggs-Eliot, 1st Baron Eliot was an English official and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1748 to 1784, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Eliot.
St Germans is a village and civil parish in east Cornwall, England. It stands on the River Tiddy, just upstream of where that river joins the River Lynher; the water way from St Germans to the Hamoaze is also known as St Germans River.
Jago Nicholas Aldo Eliot, Lord Eliot was the son of Peregrine Eliot, 10th Earl of St Germans, and Jacquetta Eliot, Countess of St Germans.
Lanhydrock House, commonly known simply as Lanhydrock, is a country house and estate in the parish of Lanhydrock, Cornwall, UK.
Monks Kirby is a village and civil parish in north-eastern Warwickshire, England. The population of the parish is 445. Monks Kirby is located around one mile east of the Fosse Way, around 8 miles north-west of Rugby, seven miles north-east of Coventry and six miles west of Lutterworth. Administratively it forms part of the borough of Rugby. One of the largest and most important villages in this part of Warwickshire in the Anglo-Saxon and later medieval period, the village continued to be a local administrative centre into the early 20th century.
St Germans Priory is a large Norman church in the village of St Germans in south-east Cornwall, England, UK.
Tregenna Castle, in St Ives, Cornwall, was built by Samuel Stephens in the 18th century and is named after the hill on which it stands. The estate was sold in 1871 and became a hotel, a purpose for which it is still used today.
Mottisfont Abbey is a historical priory and country estate in Hampshire, England. Sheltered in the valley of the River Test, the property is now operated by the National Trust. 393,250 people visited the site in 2019. The site includes the historic house museum which features regularly changing art exhibitions, gardens, including a walled rose garden which is home to the National Collection of ancestral species and 19th-century rose cultivars, and a riverside walk. It is a Grade I listed building.
Nostell Priory is a Palladian house in Nostell, West Yorkshire, England, near Crofton on the road to Doncaster from Wakefield. It dates from 1733, and was built for the Winn family on the site of a medieval priory. The Priory and its contents were given to the National Trust in 1953 by the trustees of the estate and Rowland Winn, 3rd Baron St Oswald.
Mount Edgcumbe House is a stately home in south-east Cornwall and is a Grade II listed building, whilst its gardens and parkland are listed as Grade I in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.
Stansted Park is an Edwardian country house in the parish of Stoughton, West Sussex, England. It is near the city of Chichester, and also the village of Rowlands Castle to the west over the border in Hampshire.
St Anthony-in-Meneage is a coastal civil parish and village in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The parish is in the Meneage district of the Lizard peninsula. In the 2001 census the parish had a population of 171, decreasing to 168 at the 2011 census.
St Kew is a village in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is also the name of the civil parish, which includes the church town, St Kew, and nearby St Kew Highway.
Trevarno is a private country estate in south-west Cornwall, England, UK, near the village of Crowntown, 2 miles (3.2 km) north-east of Helston. First developed in the 13th century, the estate was owned by a succession of families until 1994 when it was sold for development as a tourist attraction based around its extensive gardens. It was open to the public from 1998 until 2011, but the estate has since been broken up and the house and gardens are again a private residence.
Tideford is a small village in east Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is twinned with Plouguerneau in Brittany, France.
Norton Priory is a historic site in Norton, Runcorn, Cheshire, England, comprising the remains of an abbey complex dating from the 12th to 16th centuries, and an 18th-century country house; it is now a museum. The remains are a scheduled ancient monument and are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building. They are considered to be the most important monastic remains in Cheshire.
The Elephant Fayre was held in the stately home of Port Eliot, St Germans. A "fayre" in every sense of the word, it featured a host of different types of performances, media, experimental theatre and rock, punk, folk and reggae music. The first Fayre was tiny, attracting only 1500 or so, but the attendance increased over the years as the organisers booked better known acts, such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, and The Fall. The organisers decided to close down the festival after 1986 because of hard drug use and vandalism.
The Heligan estate was the ancestral home of the Tremayne family near Mevagissey in Cornwall, England. Purchased by Sampson Tremayne in 1569, the present house was built in 1692 and extended in the early 19th century. The family left the house after World War I, and by the end of World War II the house and gardens had fallen into disrepair. The house and outbuilding were converted into flats in the 1970s and the garden was considered lost, but it was rescued during a televised project in 1996. The Lost Gardens of Heligan are now open to the public as a tourist attraction.
Peregrine Nicholas Eliot, 10th Earl of St Germans, was a British peer and founder of the Elephant Fayre and Port Eliot Lit Fest.