An example of English architecture created during a period that was moving from the medieval Gothic to the more classically-inspired Renaissance style, Montacute is one of the few prodigy houses to have survived almost unchanged from the Elizabethan era.

Designed by an unknown architect, possibly the mason William Arnold, the three-storey mansion, constructed of the local Ham Hill stone, was built in about 1598 for Sir Edward Phelips, a lawyer and politician who was Speaker of the House of Commons from 1604 until 1611, and subsequently Master of the Rolls from 1611 until his death in 1614.

James I appointed him Master of the Rolls and Chancellor to his son and heir Henry, Prince of Wales.

[5] Phelips remained at the hub of English political life, and his legal skills were employed when he became opening prosecutor during the trial of the Gunpowder Plotters.

[6] Sir Edward's choice of architect is unknown,[a] although it has been attributed to the mason William Arnold, who was responsible for the designs of Cranborne Manor and Wadham College, Oxford, and had worked at Dunster Castle, also in Somerset.

[9] Phelips chose as the site for his new mansion a spot close by the existing house, built by his father.

[d] This peaceful existence was jolted when the estate was inherited by William Phelips (1823–89), who in his early days made many improvements and renovations to Montacute.

He was responsible for the Base Court, a low service range adjoining the south side of the mansion.

With the exception of the Phelips family portraits, the historic contents and furnishing were disposed of, and the house, an empty shell, remained on the market for two years.

Bare of furnishing and without sufficient funds to maintain it, James Lees-Milne, the secretary of the Trust's country house committee, described the mansion as an "empty and rather embarrassing white elephant".

[1] During the Second World War, Montacute was requisitioned by the army, and American soldiers were billeted in the surrounding parkland before the Normandy landings.

Built in what came to be considered the English Renaissance style, the east front, the intended principal façade, is distinguished by its Dutch gables decorated with clambering stone monkeys and other animals.

This argument is evident at Montacute, where Gothic pinnacles, albeit obelisk in form, are combined with Renaissance gables, pediments, classical statuary, ogee roofs and windows appearing as bands of glass.

This profusion of large, mullioned windows, an innovation of their day, gives the appearance that the principal façade is built entirely of glass; a similar fenestration was employed at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire.

However, despite the Dutch gables, a feature of the English Renaissance acquired as the style spread from France across the Low Countries to England, and the Gothic elements, much of the architectural influence is Italian.

[24] The windows of the second-floor Long Gallery are divided by niches containing statues, an Italian Renaissance feature exemplified at the Palazzo degli Uffizi in Florence (1560–81), which at Montacute depict the Nine Worthies dressed as Roman soldiers; the bay windows have shallow segmented pediments – a very early and primitive occurrence of this motif in England – while beneath the bay windows are curious circular hollows, probably intended for the reception of terracotta medallions, again emulating the palazzi of Florence.

Paired stair towers stand in the angles between the main body of the house and the wings that project forward, a sign of modern symmetry in the plan of the house as well as its elevation, and a symptom of the times, in that the hall no longer had a "high end" of greater state.

The two remaining pavilions flanked a large gatehouse; this long-demolished structure contained secondary lodgings.

This changed in 1787 when stonework from a nearby mansion at Clifton Maybank (which was being partly demolished) was purchased by Edward Phelips (1725–97) and used to rebuild Montacute's west front.

[30] The addition of the Clifton Maybank corridor, built in the 18th century from stone obtained from another house then undergoing alteration,[25] allowed the principal ground- and first-floor rooms to have some privacy from the servants' areas and linked the two staircases.

For the first few years after its completion, the servants continued to dine in the hall, but the family and honoured guests now ate in the Great Chamber above.

In the 16th and early 17th centuries, in a house such as Montacute, the Parlour was where the family would dine, possibly with some of their upper servants.

In a large household the buttery and "pannetry" were part of the offices pertaining to the kitchen, and as at Montacute they were generally close to the Great Hall.

The Great Chamber at Montacute contains the finest chimney-piece in the house; however, its classical statuary depicting nudes is long gone, victims of Victorian prudery.

The room contains an ornate carved wooden porch; installed in the library in the 1830s, it was originally in the parlour below.

[46] Although Montacute was equipped for a visiting sovereign, by the time it was completed Elizabeth I was dead and the family's prominence was waning.

[52] The north-east and south-east corners of the former entrance forecourt have pavilions with ogee domed roofs, oriel windows and obelisks.

[53] The avenue of clipped yews that reinforces the slightly gappy mature avenue of trees stretching away from the outer walls of the former forecourt to end in fields, and the clipped yews that outline the grassed parterre date from that time, though the famous "melted" shape of the giant hedge was inspired by the effects of a freak snowfall in 1947.

[50] This has seen Montacute's Long Gallery redecorated and restored and hung with an important collection of historical portraits from the reign of Henry VIII to that of Charles I.

The fictional location for the earlier Wallace and Gromit film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Tottington Hall, was also based on Montacute House.