The great hall and chapel block are the earliest surviving parts of the structure with the west wing being added around 1570, when the windows and decoration of the rest of the building were changed.

He made substantial changes to the house and grounds in the then fashionable Gothic revival style, and was succeeded in 1790 by his son, Sir Abraham Elton, 5th Baronet.

He was a supporter of Hannah More, and a fervent opponent of Methodism, at one time inducing the vicar of Blagdon to dismiss his curate, causing a national scandal.

He resigned as MP for Bath in 1859 and spent the rest of his life improving the town, setting up a lending library and allotments, and building and funding the cottage hospital (still in existence).

[1] During these building works, the chapel was rediscovered, the East window having been filled and altar broken off (perhaps during the English Protestant Reformation), and the room having been known until then as the "Lady's Bower".

He was also a well-known potter, setting up his "Sunflower Pottery" in the Court grounds with the help of a local boy called George Masters.

His son Sir Arthur was one of the pioneers of documentary film making in the years prior to, during and after the Second World War, working with John Grierson.

[23] The West Wing was immediately demolished, being considered to have no architectural or historical significance, to reduce running costs and to return the house to its supposed mediaeval ground plan.

The site faces south, with its back to Court Hill, and the road may have passed east–west within 15 metres (49 ft) of the front door.

Alterations during the late mediaeval period were limited to the addition of a two-storey latrine tower at the rear of the house and some rearrangement of the rooms around it.

[26][27] Sir Arthur Elton (7th Bt) began updating the house before 1850 (and the lodge at the gate dates from 1851) but it was in 1860s that he made major changes.

In the rebuilding that followed, an even larger west end was constructed but Sir Arthur took pains to ensure that its Elizabethan south front was conserved and retained.

In the late 1950s, when the National Trust agreed to take on the house, the Victorian west wing (but not its Elizabethan south front) were demolished as were a plethora of minor 18th- and 19th-century buildings at the rear.

The state room on the western side of the first floor was damaged by fire in 1882; the oak panelling around the fireplace was brought from the Eltons' former house in Queen Square, Bristol.

The bulk of the house conceals the dramatic architectural quality of the garden behind, carved out of the hillside in a series of terraces, which rise steeply back to merge with the woodland above.

Later in the 18th century, the space behind the great pilastered wall was infilled to make the top terrace, which has wide views across the valley to the Mendip Hills beyond.

The Octagon, a garden pavilion, was built about the same time,[40] as was the more rustic summer house which faces it down the long grassy walk of the Pretty Terrace.

[41] Further modifications involved facing the lower retaining wall with rosy pink bricks, which were also used to build a double flight of steps below the Octagon.

The garden is still largely in its 18th-century form, though small ponds and fountains were added in the 19th century and the once open hillside behind is now thickly wooded.

A single rose arbour remained from the Edwardian garden but was on the verge of collapse when it was replaced with a new one in 2009, marking 300 years of the Elton family's presence at Clevedon Court.

In recent years, native wild plants have been allowed to mingle with rare and exotic specimens and continual thought is being given to contrasting textures and colours of foliage.

The lower garden, below the front of the house, now has the air of a small arboretum with a number of fine specimen trees, such as a splendid late-leafing catalpa (an oriental plane tree) dominates this part of the garden and the grass at its foot is left uncut during the Spring, allowing camassias and bluebells to make a fine showing.

There are now many species and colours of lavender and plenty of agapanthus, crinum, nerines and day lilies, together with such rarities as a Heptacodium and an Arbutus menziesii.