[2] Early lessees include Thomas Horton (d. 1530), owner of a cloth mill at Iford, who is thought to have been responsible for improvements to the nearby village church.
[3] The house was devised to the National Trust by Edgar Lister, a diplomat at the Ottoman court.
The house contains fine furniture, musical instruments and tapestries collected by Lister from 1911 until his death in 1956.
He restored the house throughout and adorned the garden with topiary; he was also an expert in needlepoint and upholstered much of its furniture in Florentine work.
[citation needed] The property is occupied by a tenant who administers it on behalf of the National Trust, and is open to the public a few days of the week in the summer.