Montacute House is a late Elizabethan mansion in Montacute, South Somerset, England. An example of English architecture created during a period that was moving from the medieval Gothic to the more classically-inspired Renaissance style, Montacute is one of the few prodigy houses to have survived almost unchanged from the Elizabethan era. The house has been designated as a Grade I listed building, and its gardens are also listed at the highest grade on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.
Designed by an unknown architect, possibly the mason William Arnold, the three-storey mansion, constructed of the local Ham Hill stone, was built in about 1598 for Sir Edward Phelips, a lawyer and politician who was Speaker of the House of Commons from 1604 until 1611, and subsequently Master of the Rolls from 1611 until his death in 1614. He was the prosecutor in the trial of the Gunpowder Plotters. Phelips' descendants occupied the house until the early 20th century. For a brief period, the house was let to tenants, one of whom was Lord Curzon, who lived at the house with his mistress, the novelist Elinor Glyn. The house narrowly escaped demolition in the early 20th century, when it was valued for scrap at just under £6,000. In 1931, it was purchased by the philanthropist, Ernest Cook, who presented the house to the National Trust. One of the earliest of the Trust's acquisitions, the house came empty of its contents, and without the endowment the Trust subsequently required, its then secretary, James Lees-Milne describing it as an "empty and rather embarrassing white elephant".
