An old manor.

Long before any manor stood here, people gathered on this spot. The site has at least two ancient wells, possibly a third, and many believe a community lived here before the Domesday Book was written. Ley lines and water running beneath the ground lend it an air of mystique.

There was almost certainly an early religious community nearby, and the Grade I listed church of St Peter next door was built to serve a growing village.

A local dowser who visited recently found another lost well, and told the owners that early Christians often capped over wells that had been revered by those who came before them.

The first written record of Portishead appears in the Domesday Book of 1086. “Porteshe” belonged to the Bishop of Coutances and was held for him by a lord named William. Before the Conquest it had been held by Aluric, the Saxon lord of Portishead.

The entry describes land for eight ploughs, around 240 acres of demesne farmland worked by servants, villeins and cottagers, and a stretch of woodland. The whole estate was valued at seventy shillings a year.

Records of the Court of the Exchequer name William Le Bret as the first known owner, around 1200. He built himself a manor house on or near the site of today’s farmhouse. Earlier timber buildings almost certainly stood here too, though nothing of them survives.

His estate included six and a half hides of land, a mill, the right to appoint the vicar of the church, and the “capital messuage” — the chief house of Portesheved.

In 1300 Ralph de Stoke and his wife Agnes, probably a Le Bret heiress, sold the manor house and a smaller estate of four hides, plus a share of two mills, to William de la Salle of Bradford in Wiltshire. The price was £20.

The de la Salle (or Halle) family now owned the largest manor in Portishead and let the land to tenants, among them the Bristol merchant Gervase le French.

The dowser who visited the house dated the timber in its medieval part to around 1350.

The oldest surviving part of the house is the east side. A 2006 survey for the Somerset Vernacular Building Research Group found it to be almost certainly 15th century, and a heritage consultant believes the roof timbers in the main ground-floor room are older than 1500.

It was probably built as a single great hall with a high ceiling on eight huge beams. At the west end the floor rises about six inches. One theory is that the lord of the manor sat here to hold court, looking down on those brought before him — perhaps how the house got its name. Another is simpler: this was the high table, where the family dined above their servants.

Notches cut into a beam above the dais led one visiting historian to wonder whether it once held a rood screen, which would suggest a religious building. Some 19th-century villagers called it “The Monastery”, though no link to a religious order has ever been found.

During the reign of Elizabeth I the manor passed to Edward Morgan, a wealthy merchant and MP for Monmouth. He is thought to have built the west side of the house — the Tudor “Court House” itself.

The story goes that he added the slender hexagonal tower so he could watch his ships waiting in Woodhill Bay and King Road for a tide to carry them up to Bristol. The tower was probably finished a little later, judging by its brick corners and the patched join with the west gable. Some still regard it as the perfect lookout.

Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described its tall polygonal form, stone with red-brick angles, and windows typical of the later 16th century.

From 1608 the City of Bristol began buying property in Portishead, acquiring the manor in 1616. Between 1619 and 1620 it paid William Morgan £500 for “Chappell’s farm” — the Great Mansion House — beginning around 400 years of city ownership.

The manor court was held here, and in 1624 Bristol revived it in great style: the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors processed behind the sword-bearer. Records show Mistress Grace Chappell was paid for the use of her home after the court of 1621.

Later, the city fathers sent claret, sack and even half a gross of tobacco pipes ahead of them for their annual visits, stopping for refreshment at Failand Inn on the way there and back.

George Chappell, the farm’s most notable tenant, sided with the King. Records show he was in arms for two years at the Royalist garrison on Battery Point, which guarded the passage to Bristol.

In August 1645 Sir Thomas Fairfax sent a force, including 200 local “clubmen”, to take the fort. Many defenders slipped away home; the rest asked for terms. On 28 August they handed over the fort, its guns and powder, swore never again to fight Parliament, and were allowed to go home. With the point held, Bristol was cut off from relief by sea.

Rector John Shipton copied the Parliamentary account of the surrender into the Portishead parish register.

George Chappell and his wife Katherine built the fireplace in the first-floor parlour of the old house. On one side, inside a heart-shaped shield, are their initials “GC” with “K” beneath; on the other, the date 1664.

Nobody knows exactly what it marked. A 1647 survey gives their ages, suggesting they married young — so 1664 may have been their 25th anniversary. Or, as George had stayed loyal to the Crown, it may celebrate the Restoration of Charles II, perhaps even a royal favour.

George became Bailiff of Portishead, and the couple entertained the Mayor and surveyors from Bristol here when the manor court sat. In 1662 they were repaid £8 13s 10d for the cost.

George was buried in 1682 and Katherine in 1700. The couple had no children, so Katherine left a bequest of “pancake money”, paid out every Shrove Tuesday to poor churchgoers of Portishead who received no other help from the parish.

The tenancy then passed to the Reverend Dr Read. A record of the manor court of 1704 says it was held in the hall of part of the house that had once been an inn, called the Tower House.

On the underside of the attic staircase, in a small first-floor room, someone carved “Edward Score 1751” — most likely the carpenter who built it. The same room has a wall recess that may once have held sacred vessels, leading some to think it was a private chapel. It is also the room that always seems to feel cold.

In 1829 the writer John Rutter noted the curious hexagonal tower, an oak staircase and a carved oak chimney piece, and that the old hall was being used as a cider cellar. That chimney piece has since disappeared.

The Quaker Wedmore family farmed here from the mid-1800s, at one point working nearly 270 acres. John and Samuel Wedmore ran a tea and grocery business across the High Street, almost certainly Portishead’s first shop.

In the late 1880s brothers John and Arthur left for Texas, when its population was still tiny. Decades later, Miss Jessie Wedmore wrote to the local paper that her brothers, sisters, father and grandfather had all been born at Court House Farm.

Cecil Wedmore, the last of the family in Portishead, studied music in Paris and published a novel, “Martha of Mendip”.

Frederick Copp and his family came up from Devon and ran a dairy here from 1906, with grazing rights across Portishead. He advertised for milkmen and dairy hands, once fell out with the council over rainwater running into his meadow, and was told in reply that his cows wandered the footpaths unattended.

Mrs Copp still left old-fashioned calling cards when friends were out. The Copps invited local historian Henry Carr to look round the house, which he judged the most important in the parish after Capenor Court. Frederick retired in 1919 and the farm’s contents were sold.

In 1930 Samuel and Amy Gale moved in with their eight children after the house had stood empty for eighteen months, ivy-covered, with trees growing in the yard — and rumoured to be haunted. The Gales are one of Portishead’s oldest families, traced in the parish registers back to 1570.

The farm then ran to some 300 acres, reaching up to the old Portishead Radio Station. Miss Gertie Gale drove the tractor during the Second World War, and the farm was the district’s collection point for teasels, used to raise the nap on woollen cloth.

Gertie described a very happy childhood here. When she died in 2008 she was Bristol Corporation’s last tenant, ending some 400 years of city ownership.

Graffiti left by wartime visitors still covers the inside walls of the tower.

For generations people have whispered about a hidden tunnel running to St Peter’s Church — or to a well-known inn on the High Street. We can confirm it really does exist, though it is currently filled in.

Two women who played here as girls in the 1950s and 60s remember lifting a trapdoor and playing on the tunnel steps. Relatives of earlier occupants recall following a passage until the roof had caved in. One branch heads towards the church and the other runs north, and it can still be glimpsed beneath a trapdoor in the garden by the church gate.

Smugglers’ hideaway, or cellar for the inn’s ale barrels? One day, we will dig it out.

After Gertie Gale’s death, local people formed a group hoping to save the farm for the community. Despite English Heritage’s advice that it be sold as one lot by private treaty, it went to auction in London in May 2010, and was bought by the Spitalfields Heritage Trust. It then stood empty for five years.

Today’s custodians, Helen and Michael, have lovingly restored the Grade II* listed house, its outbuildings and its gardens, giving this ancient place a new lease of life — and opening it to guests once more.

Court House Farm and neighbouring Springfield Farm, once two tenancies, are now one. Only around 5.5% of England’s listed buildings share the house’s Grade II* status.