ONE of Somerset’s most intriguing country houses, Grade I-listed St Catherine’s Court stands in 14 acres of famous gardens and grounds, overlooking a hidden wooded valley some five miles north of the World Heritage city of Bath. Originally built as a priory grange for the monks of Bath Abbey, the manor takes its name from the Grade II*-listed, 12th-century parish Church of St Catherine, which is within the grounds.
Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII granted the manor to his tailor, John Malte, whose son, also John, an Elizabethan courtier, sold St Catherine’s Court to John Blanchard in 1591. Blanchard’s son, William, remodelled the house in the early 17th century and, in 1610, the porch was added and a terraced garden was laid out. Following several generations of Blanchard ownership, the house
