Original Building
The original Leigh Court was an Elizabethan mansion built by Sir George Norton of Bristol in 1558. His great-great-grandson, also George Norton (born 1622), unknowingly hosted Charles II, who arrived at the house the evening of 12 September 1651, during his escape to France following the Battle of Worcester. the Nortons were friends of the Kings's travelling companion, Jane Lane. The Nortons were unaware of the King's identity during his three-day stay.
While staying at Leigh Court and after being recognised by the elderly butler, who had served the King when a young Prince at Richmond, Charles deflected suspicion by asking a trooper, who had been in the King's personal guard, to describe the King's appearance and clothing at the Battle of Worcester. The man looked at Charles and said, "The King was at least three inches taller than you."
Richard Ollard describes the house in The Escape of Charles II, After the Battle of Worcester:
"Abbots Leigh was the most magnificent of all the houses in which Charles was sheltered during his escape. A drawing made in 1788, only twenty years before it was pulled down, shows a main front of twelve gables, surmounting three storeys of cowled windows; a comfortable, solid west country Elizabethan house."
After the Restoration, the King made George Norton a Knight; his widow set up an elaborate monument to him in the church at Abbot's Leigh.
The manor of Abbot's Leigh eventually passed into the hands of the Trenchard family after Sir George Norton's son, also Sir George (1648–1715), and his daughter Grace (1676–1697) both died without issue. William Trenchard of Cutteridge, Wiltshire, had married Ellen Norton, sister and coheir of Sir George. The direct Trenchard line died out on the death of John William Hippisley Trenchard (1740–1801) and the estate and the old Tudor manor, now in a state of disrepair, was sold to Philip John Miles (1773–1845), who also owned properties and extensive estates elsewhere including Kings Weston House (by Sir John Vanbrugh), The Manor House (Old Rectory) at Walton-in-Gordano, Walton Castle, Cardigan Priory and Underdown by Anthony Keck in Ledbury, Herefordshire.
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