Bibury Court is a Grade I listed Jacobean mansion, built on the site of a former Benedictine monastery. It dates from the late 16th Century, and was then extended in 1633 by Sir Thomas Sackville, the illegitimate son of the 1st Earl of Dorset who was ‘Knight and gentleman-usher in dailie waiting on the King’ (James I). Charles II is reputed to have visited the Court when he attended Bibury Races, as did the Prince Regent during the reign of George III.
The house remained in the Sackville family for several generations and through the female line passed to the Cresswells. It was them who, owing to a disputed will and years of litigation, sold the house in the last century to Lord Sherbourne. Charles Dickens is said to have written ‘Bleak House’ with this court case in mind. The interior was remodelled for Estcourt Cresswell in 1759.
Later it fell into disrepair in the 1920s being refurbished for the Clark family in 1922 in whose ownership it remained until 1968 when it was sold after the death of Lady Clark, and turned into a hotel.
The rest, as they say, is history……