Talboys House

John Seed originally built it, but the property gained real significance when Richard Talboys acquired it in 1623 and spent two decades substantially expanding and improving the building between 1628 and 1641. What makes it particularly valuable is how remarkably little has changed since those seventeenth-century modifications, giving you an unusually authentic look at how manor houses were actually designed and built during that period.

The house displays the characteristic stone construction and proportions you'd expect from the era, with Talboys's alterations reflecting the growing confidence and ambitions of the gentry in the early modern period. A sensitive restoration in 1933 preserved rather than reconstructed the building, so you're seeing genuine period features rather than modern recreations, alongside thoughtful twentieth-century conservation work.

The house sits in Doughton within the civil parish of Tetbury Upton, right in the heart of the Cotswolds. The market town of Tetbury is just a few miles away, offering shops, restaurants, and other historical sites worth exploring. The surrounding countryside is excellent for walking, and this location makes the house an ideal stop if you're interested in the region's architectural heritage and rural character. The combination of authentic seventeenth-century details and the landscape around it gives you a real sense of gentry life in the Cotswolds during this fascinating period.