BY CHARLES EVANS

Horton Court lies in a valley in the South Cotswolds. Originally a Norman hall, now a manor house, it has an interesting and diverse history.

Horton Court is a stone-built 16th century manor house in Horton, near Chipping Sodbury, South Gloucestershire, England. The building retains a 12th-century Norman hall, and displays some of the earliest Renaissance decorative motifs used in England. It has been a National Trust property since 1949.

The house was built in about 1521 by Rev. William Knight (d. 1547), Prothonotary to the Holy See, and later Bishop of Bath and Wells. In 1937 Horton Court was purchased by Miss Hilda Proctor Wills (1880-13/5/1946), daughter of Sir George Alfred Wills, 1st Bt of Blagdon (1854–1928) by his wife Susan Britton Proctor (1856–1904).[17] She was thus a member of the Bristol-based Wills family, proprietors of the Imperial Tobacco Company of Bristol. At her death in 1946 she bequeathed the property to the National Trust in memory of her nephew Sir George Peter Vernon Wills, 3rd Baronet of Blagdon (1922–1945), of the Coldstream Guards, killed in action in Italy in 1945.