Local History
Fernleah was mentioned as long ago as 987 AD in a charter of King Ethelred. The name is Old
English and means a clearing where ferns grew. At the time of the Doomsday Book in 1086 it was
known as 'Ferlege' and was held by Almar of the great Norman Baron Roger de Courseulles. At
this time six families are recorded cultivating a 'hide of land' with three acres of meadow and six
acres of wood. By the 12th century it had become known as Farleigh and was owned by the
Montfort family who sold it to the Burghersh's in 1337. It passed from them to Sir Thomas
Hungerford, speaker of the House of Commons in 1370. The Hungerfords owned it, off and on,
until 1686. It was in 1412 that the village became known as Farleigh Hungerford.
The original manor house was fortified between 1370 and 1380 by Sir Thomas, unfortunately he
failed to get the necessary Royal consent for this but was pardoned for not doing so and a licence for
such granted in 1383. Sir Thomas died in 1398 and was succeeded by his son Walter, a
distinguished soldier and also Speaker of the House of Commons. He later became Lord
Hungerford, Lord High Treasurer of England and in 1443 built a new church, St Leonard's now
enclosed within the walls of the castle.
Two members of the Hungerford family backed the wrong side of the Wars of the Roses and lost
their heads as a consequence. Farleigh was confiscated and given to George, Duke of Clarence,
brother of Edward IV, who later, according to tradition drowned in a butt of malmsey wine. His
daughter, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, last of the Plantagenets, was born at Farleigh Castle in
1473. Accused of treason in 1541, she refused to lay her head on the block on grounds of innocence.
The executioner was obliged to follow her round the scaffold chopping at her head and succeeded
eventually in hewing it from her shoulders.
The Hungerfords faired badly too. Lady Agnes was hanged at Tyburn in 1523 for having had her
first husband strangled, while Walter, Lord Hungerford was beheaded for treason in 1541. The
castle was surveyed and found to have 'many fair chambers, a fair large hall on the head of which
hall 3 or 4 goodly great chambers with fair and strong roofs'. The park was 'environed round about
with high hills and in the midst a broad and deep running stream . . . very well set with great oaks
and other wood.' The castle was garrisoned by Royalists during the Civil War but avoided the
destruction which overtook so many castles.
The spendthrift Sir Edward Hungerford ruined the family and the castle, being forced to sell up in
1685. A Trowbridge clothier, Joseph Houlton, bought the Farleigh estate in 1702 but not the castle
itself. His son, Joseph Houlton, junior, lived at the home farm, an old gabled house, which he turned
into a gentleman's residence known as Farleigh House. He also created a 'grandly timbered' deer
park of 120 acres. In 1730 he bought the castle and at once announced that he was pulling it down
and selling the materials.
Farleigh House remained a modest one until Lt. Colonel John Houlton, a devotee of the Gothic
Revival, succeeded to the estate in 1806. He enlarged and altered the house using the fashionable
medieval style and spent £40,000 - perhaps a million pounds in today‘s values - on embellishments
including hot houses, conservatories, stabling and six lodges. These included the Castle Lodge, now
the Bath Lodge Hotel, built between 1806 and 1813, and comparable in scale and atmosphere to the
Gloucester Lodge at nearby Lullington, although the Bath Lodge is more solid. It is an attractive
building, redolent of Arthurian romance, and a perfect little fortress complete with towers,
battlements and portcullis and the obligatory heraldic shields, in this case bearing the coat-of-arms of
John Houlton and his wife, Mary Anne Ellis.
Approximately seventeen years ago the original restoration and conversion to
an hotel was undertaken with sympathy, style and imagination by Mr John Morris,
a retired local builder. The north extension was added in 1995 providing additional
accommodation and it was this building which we took ownership of in November
2001. Since then we have continued to enhance the property whilst trying to
be honest to its original character and feel — we hope you think we have been
successful in this.
The castle is now an English Heritage property and is open daily from 10.00am onwards. Closed between 1.00pm and
2.00pm during winter and finally closing at varying times through the year. Admission charge is £2.30 for adults and
£1.20 for children.
