Today, nearby hills and woodlands, including Exmoor National Park, have provided opportunities for general scientific introductory field courses on environmental themes and botany.

Habitats include marine, freshwater and heather moorland and the surrounding settlements range from hamlets to villages to the country town of Taunton.

[5] It passed to Warine de Raleigh, and on through direct blood heirs until the 19th century, a claim strengthened by marriages between deep ancestral cousins.

Nettlecombe was held in continuity by Trevilian successors until the 20th century following the death of Joan Trevelyan and her husband Garnet Ruskin Wolseley.

In the 1640s there were further additions to the rear of the great hall following a fire started by roundheads opposed to George Trevelyns support of the monarchy during the English Civil War.

Later in the 12th century Warrin de Ralegh, Hugh's nephew, built a manor house on the site now occupied by Nettlecombe Court.

Sir Simon left money in his will to build a chantry chapel in St Mary's Church, including a perpetual fund for a priest to pray for the souls of the Ralegh family past and present.

The job description for the priest retained to pray for the souls of the Raleigh family required the following moral virtues; "with owt the company of women and suspect persons' and that he not be 'lecherous or perjured, a theaff, a murderer or with any other vices corrupt."

Trevillian-Trevelyan: A family lineage published in Nettlecombe Court shows that the estate passed into the Trevillian family in 1452, when the heiress of the estate, Elizabeth Whalesburgh, upon her marriage, gave Nettlecombe Court as a wedding present to her bridegroom, a knight companion of the king: Sir John Trevilian,[14] Esquire of the Kynge's Body to Henry VI, Gentleman Usher of the King's Chamber.

These gifts are the oldest examples of British hallmarked church plate in the United Kingdom, and today are preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

In 1530 Trevillian renovated and built the present Nettlecombe Court, as it generally appears now, incorporating favorite parts of the earlier medieval manor house.

[18] Nettlecombe Court's hidden treasure during the English Civil War: Colonel George Trevelyan then took up arms and fought for the Royalist cause in defense of the king, but eventually was captured and imprisoned by Oliver Cromwell.

Cromwell's roundheads came to Nettlecombe to seize whatever property they could: crops, horses, farm animals, wagons, tools, weapons, house goods, etc.

When Cromwell's Parliament demanded excessive war reparations of royalist Catholics, Lady Margaret Trevillian (née Strode) bravely journeyed to London.

On her journey home, Lady Trevillian died en route, after catching smallpox whilst in London, leaving her 9 children motherless.

In the 19th century, Lady Trevelyan made use of the family estates Wallington and Nettlecombe with its great house and 20,000 acres of land, to host a sophisticated intellectual and artistic salon of the day, renowned for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

[20][21] Nettlecombe Court has several emblems and carvings bearing the image of a horse rising from the sea, which are the Trevilian family arms, found throughout the house.

The sedentary knights jovially bet wagers amongst themselves around the supper table, as to whether or not Trevilian and his white horse could survive swimming through the incoming flooding and make it to higher ground.

[22] Submerged Medieval church bells of the lost land of Lyonesse were later said to be heard ringing, muffled under the water, when turbulent storms created rough seas.

The surviving Trevilian became the founder of the current British Trevilian-Trevelyan family, whose coat of arms still bears a white horse issuing forth from the sea.

The continuity of open woodland and parkland, with large mature and over-mature timber, has enabled characteristic species of epiphytic lichens and beetles to become established and persist.

In 1792 Thomas Veitch laid out the landscape in the style of Capability Brown including the construction of a Ha-ha between the deer park and the meadows.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, timber hewn from the oaks of Nettlecombe were hand-selected to help build the ships of the English fleet commanded by Sir Walter Raleigh that defeated the Spanish Armada.

[30][31] A number of other English ships that sailed the world to establish British colonies, its navy, and trading empire were built making use of prime Nettlecombe oaks.

In the 19th century very good prices were offered to the Trevelyan baronet to cut down and sell the great oaks, but the owner left them standing and the trees have been protected ever since.