The Gatehouse website record for Acton Court

In the civil parish of Iron Acton. In the historic county of Gloucestershire (Modern Authority of Bristol; City of, 1974 county of Avon).

A C14 moated house. Court Farm is the state apartment and half the long gallery of a mid C16 courtier house of considerable pretension. It exhibits important classical details comparable to those at Lacock and is surrounded by the ruins and below ground remains of the rest of the house. Iron Acton was the principal seat of one of the branches of the Poyntz family who were prominent at court for much of the 16th century. This explains why the house is of such high quality and in such an advanced style. Even in its incomplete and damaged state, it ranks among the half-doxen most important examples of the court style of the 1540s and 50s, a period that saw the introduction into England of the assured and distinctive classicism recently developed in France. The surviving house is in the midst of late C16 - early C17 house, now farmhouse. It is of rubble construction with double Roman tile roofs. To the west are the earthworks of garden terraces and to the north are earthworks which may represent an associated farm/estate complex.

The Ordnance Survey Map Grid Reference is ST67708419

Sources of information, references and further reading

This site's English Heritage (PastScape) Defra or Monument number is 201562
Further information may be available from the holder of the county Historic Environment Record. In particular 'grey' literature, such as watching brief reports, held by H.E.R.s is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded in this website, or elsewhere.

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

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*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.