Godolphin House, Breage, Cornwall - August 26, 1988
Today the Godolphin Estate is a National Trust property situated in Godolphin Cross, north-west of Helston, Cornwall. When these photographs were taken the house was privately owned by the Schofield family and opened on occasional days to visitors.
The Estate is the former seat of the Dukes of Leeds and the Earls of Godolphin. It contains a Grade 1 listed Tudor/Stuart mansion, complete with early formal gardens (dating from circa 1500) and Elizabethan stables (circa 1600). The present house is remnant of a larger mansion. From 1786 it was owned by the Dukes of Leeds who never lived there. In 1920 the 10th Duke of Leeds sold it to the sitting tenant Peter Quintrell Treloar. After Treloar died in 1922, the following year his wife sold it to James Penna an agricultural engineer. James Penna died in 1926 and his son James Henry Penna inherited the house and estate and lived there until his death in 1935. In 1935 it was sold to C.B. Stevens, a local man, but he then sold the house and estate to Sidney Schofield in 1937. In 2000, Mary Schofield, widow of Sidney sold the wider estate to the National Trust and in 2007 she then sold the house, gardens and farm-yard to the National Trust.
The National Trust then carried out a major conservation project of the architecture of the North Range (the historic front) to prevent it from further decay and collapse. The house is open to the public on certain days. The Estate measures 550 acres (220 ha) and includes Godolphin Hill which provides views over west Cornwall.
Over the years the house and estate has been used as a filming location the first series of the original BBC TV Poldark had scenes filmed at Godolphin and more recently the 1998 film adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier novel Frenchman’s Creek.
