Athelhampton House

Summary

A Grade I listed medieval manor house near Puddletown in Dorset, built from around 1485 for Sir William Martin following a licence to crenellate, with a substantially unaltered Tudor facade and Great Hall; acquired by Alfred de Lafontaine in 1890 who commissioned gardens by Inigo Thomas in 1891 to 1892; associated with Thomas Hardy; used as a filming location for Sleuth (1972), Doctor Who (BBC, 1976 and 2008), and From Time to Time (2009).

About this location

Athelhampton House stands near the village of Puddletown in Dorset, approximately five miles northeast of Dorchester. The estate is recorded in Domesday Book as held by the Bishop of Salisbury. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon personal name Aethelhelm, recorded in the 13th century when the estate was held by the de Loundres family. In 1350 Richard Martyn married the de Pydele heiress, and their descendant Sir William Martin received a licence to enclose 160 acres as a deer park and a licence to crenellate the manor, which led to construction of the current house from around 1485. The front facade, with its distinctive oriel window containing eight panels of stained glass depicting the Martyn arms impaled with those of allied families, has remained largely unaltered since the 15th century.

The Great Hall at Athelhampton is a fine example of medieval domestic architecture, with a hammer-beam roof. The Oriel Window is considered one of the finest pieces of domestic stained glass in England of its period. The house passed through numerous owners over the centuries; with ownership often split and frequently absentee, Athelhampton served at times as a farmhouse, which inadvertently preserved its medieval character from later modernisation.

In 1890, the antiquarian Alfred de Lafontaine acquired the house and undertook sympathetic conservation works, guided in his approach by his friendship with Thomas Hardy, who had known Athelhampton since childhood — his father worked as a stonemason on the property — and who drew on the house in several literary works, describing a farmhouse fitting Athelhampton in Far from the Madding Crowd and setting the poem “The Dame of Athelhall” at the property.

Lafontaine commissioned Inigo Thomas to design the gardens between 1891 and 1892, creating a sequence of formal “outdoor rooms” structured around two principal axes that link the house to its surroundings. The Coruna, a circular space enclosed by stone walls and approached through four gateways, forms the intersection of these axes. The 12 giant yew pyramids of the Great Court and the long Yew Alley running south from the West Lawn are among the most recognisable elements of Thomas’s design.

Sleuth (Palomar Pictures/Columbia, 1972, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, adapted from Anthony Shaffer’s stage play) filmed at Athelhampton House. Doctor Who: The Seeds of Doom (BBC One, 1976, Season 13, written by Robert Banks Stewart, starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor) used the house for location sequences. Doctor Who: “The Unicorn and the Wasp” (BBC One, 2008, Series 4, written by Gareth Roberts, starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Fenella Woolgar as Agatha Christie) returned to Athelhampton. From Time to Time (Ecosse Films, 2009, written and directed by Julian Fellowes, starring Maggie Smith and Tim Curry, based on Lucy M. Boston’s novel The Chimneys of Green Knowe) used the house as the fictional Oldknow House.