Tyntesfield, a Victorian Gothic country house with extensive garden and parkland in Somerset

Address: Wraxall, Somerset, BS48 1PA.

If you love fascinating stories, Tyntesfield, located just a stone’s throw from Bristol, can be a pawfect place for your next dog-friendly getaway. 

The story of Tyntesfield is inextricably linked to the Gibbs family. William Gibbs, a successful merchant and, at the time, one of the richest men in England, made his fortune from trading a highly efficient fertiliser, guano from Peru. The situation for his prosperity was beneficial: the boom in agriculture in Europe resulted in the high demand for guano. Being a monopolist and controlling the import of Peruvian fertiliser, he would earn £100,000 a year, or over £8,000,000 in today’s money. That wealth, however, was gained mostly by using people working in slave-like conditions. The family guano business operated from 1842 to 1861. During this time, workers’ conditions, fortunately, improved under Gibbs’s control.

William Gibbs bought Tyntesfield, formerly known as Tyntes Place, in 1843. He made a decision to rebuild and enlarge the earlier house in order to transform it into a family home in Neo-Gothic style, for his wife Matilda Blanche Gibbs and their seven children. The interiors were also in the Gothic style. In 1872, William Gibbs commissioned Arthur Blomfield to add a Gothic chapel to the north side of the house. It was completed in 1875, just before William’s death. After completion, the chapel was open for the family and their guests.

The Gibbs family owned the house until the death of Richard Gibbs in 2001. In 2002, to prevent Tyntesfield from being sold to private hands and ensure it would be open to the public, the National Trust launched a big fundraising campaign “Save Tyntesfield” and managed to collect £8.2 million in just 100 days. Using funds from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the National Lottery as well, the National Trust ended up buying the main central part of the Estate, including the house, the kitchen garden and the park. During restoration, the National Trust, for the first time, allowed visitors to watch the transformation of the house and ‘witness the challenge of bringing Tyntesfield back to life’.