History
Originally built as a priory with adjoining St Germans Priory Church parts of the house date back to the twelfth century. It was substantially altered and remodelled in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by noted architects including Sir John Soane.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Eliot family invested heavily in the estate, building numerous farmhouses, fisherman's cottages and other dwellings across the land. Many of these remain part of the estate to this day and are rented out to local residents and friends of the family. Some properties, mainly lying remote from the estate, have been sold in recent years.
Read more about this topic: Port Eliot
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)