[1] Chastleton House was built between 1607 and 1612, possibly by Robert Smythson,[1] for Walter Jones, who had made his fortune from the law,[2] although his family were originally Welsh wool merchants.

The estate was bought in 1602 from Robert Catesby, although his residence was demolished to make way for the new house and no traces of the original building on this spot remain.

Chastleton House is famous for an episode from the English Civil War in which a loyal wife duped (and drugged) Roundhead soldiers to save her husband.

Sarah Jewell, granddaughter of the art critic Alan Clutton-Brock and his first wife Shelagh Archer, who died in a road accident in 1936,[3][4] recalled her childhood reenactments of the scene when visiting her grandfather and his second wife Barbara (née Foy-Mitchell), the last owners of the manor (it having passed on the death of Irene Whitmore-Jones in 1955[5] to Alan Clutton-Brock, her relative by marriage):[6] "My sisters and I used to love running around searching for the secret room where Arthur Jones, the grandson of Walter Jones, hid after the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

His quick-witted wife, Sarah – my childhood heroine – hid him in the secret closet over the porch and although the pursuing soldiers found his exhausted horse in the stables they couldn't find him.

Rather it was built within an existing settlement, Chastleton village, which provided many of the services for the house which would otherwise have been attached, such as a laundry, a fishpond and a bakehouse.

Its treatment by the Trust was similarly unusual, with a policy of conservation (often called 'controlled decay') rather than restoration, enabling visitors to see the house largely as it was when acquired.

This is an impressive feature surviving from the period, although the gallery at Montacute House in Somerset is of a similar age and at 172 feet (52 m), is the longest in England.

The neglect of the roof for almost two centuries led to the failing of part of the plaster ceiling in the early 1800s, but it was not repaired until 1904–1905, when two local men were engaged to make good the losses.

[11] In 1919 a number of significant tapestries were discovered at the house, and were interpreted as evidence for the establishment of a tapestry-weaving venture by William Sheldon (d. 1570) at Barcheston in Warwickshire, although modern research questions this.

[citation needed] The Grade II listed garden at Chastleton has undergone a number of revisions since the completion of the house in 1612.

It is laid out according to the recommendation proposed by Gervase Markham in his book The English Husbandman (1613)[13] – a forecourt to the front of the house, with the base (or bass) court on one side, which included the stables and other farm buildings.