The Dower House, Wolfdown

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The Dower House, Wolfdown, is a listed building in the grounds of Wolfdown House, Woolfont Abbas, Wilts, used for centuries as the dower house to the caput of the Dukes of Taunton and their baronial Malet predecessors.

The building, of circa 1450, has been preserved externally as it had been built, a classic sample of pre-Tudor, Yorkist architecture without, with what Pevsner judged ‘a perfect Jacobean interior’. It is built of stone from Chickmarsh, but, at that date, not of Chickmarsh stone as such, as we know it today; the Grade II listed dovecot is likewise so constructed.

Its gardens, Grade II listed in their own right, are, as they stand today, the work of Gertrude Jekyll.

It was for some years the residence of the then Lady Crispin Fitzjames-Holles-Clare-Malet, sister-in-law to the present Duke of Taunton, and of her children, Rupert (the Duke’s heir presumptive), James, and Henrietta Maria. Lady Crispin in her widowhood married Sir Giles Trulock FRCVS, and nowadays the Hon. Lady Trulock, as she now is, resides primarily in Woolfont Parva, in her husband’s long-time home. All the same, at His Grace’ insistence, she retains the Dower House tenancy, and the children are expected by their ducal uncle to put up there when possible.

See also

References
 * The Woolfonts
 * Wolfdown House
 * Charles, Duke of Taunton
 * The Hon. Lady Trulock
 * Rupert, Master of Dilton
 * James Fitzjames-Holles-Clare-Malet
 * Henrietta Maria Fitzjames-Holles-Clare-Malet
 * Gertrude Jekyll

Further Reading