With Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn coming to stay for two days, Sir Nicholas Poyntz tore down his kitchen block at Acton Court and built a range of luxury royal apartments. They are still there, and the full report on their rediscovery has just been published.

‘Although it is still inhabited,’ wrote Neil Burton in 1977, ‘this substantial mansion is now in a state of advanced decay which is extremely picturesque, but must lead eventually to a partial collapse of the structure.’ It was the occasion of a Royal Archaeological Institute summer visit (see box), and it was the first time that Acton Court, which lies close to Iron Acton village in the Vale of Berkeley about 15km north-east of Bristol, had registered on the archaeological radar. What no-one knew then was that this crumbling old farmhouse had been built to accommodate King Henry VIII and Queen Anne Boleyn on a royal progress in 1535.

When the house was auctioned in 1984 after the death of the owner, it was bought by Bristol Visual and Environmental Buildings Trust, a ‘revolving fund and committed to doing up old buildings and selling them on in order to preserve them. But preliminary investigations in 1985 revealed that the Trust had taken on too much. Acton Court represented the remains of a major Tudor courtier’s mansion of early 16th century date. This made it an exceptional rarity: such was the remodelling of grand houses in the Elizabethan and Jacobean building boom that very few early 16th century houses survived in their original form.

To break even on the purchase, the Trust wanted to divide the main house into three separate residences, and to create four further houses from the outbuildings, prior to re-sale on the open market. The effect of this would have been to trash a lot of sub-surface archaeology, to destroy the integrity of the standing building, and to transform the atmosphere of the site.
English Heritage now stepped in. It purchased the site from the Trust, also on the ‘revolving fund’ basis that it would in due course be sold on (with conditions attached). The advantage was that English Heritage could readily access the finance necessary for a programme of archaeological work and buildings conservation. The results would fully vindicate the decision.