Melbury House

Melbury House is a stone manor in West Dorset built around a distinctive hexagonal tower that serves as its defining feature. The tower provides views across the formal gardens and surrounding farmland that extends beyond the property.

Sir Giles Strangways rebuilt the medieval manor after 1546 using local ham stone quarried from the region. His reconstruction established the basic structure that forms the foundation of what stands today.

Thomas Hardy depicted this house in his novels as King's Hintock Court, making it an important location in English literary history. Readers familiar with his works can recognize the settings he drew from real places in the region.

The property is accessed through a tree-lined drive that connects to the A37 near Yeovil Lodge. The location and entrance arrangement make it fairly straightforward to find and reach from major roads.

Photography pioneer Henry Fox Talbot was born at Melbury House, linking this location to the origins of modern photographic technique. His inventions in the 1830s and 1840s fundamentally changed how images could be captured and reproduced.