Great Chalfield, built between 1467 and 1480 by the steward of the great Hungerford family and Bristol merchant, Thomas Tropnell (c.1405–1488), MP, was recently voted one of the half-dozen finest manor houses in England in a poll carried out by Country Life. It owes this to its architecture, a mixture of the medieval and the cunningly restored; to its warm, local honey-coloured stone and to its moated setting and gardens designed by the garden watercolourist, Alfred Parsons (1847–1920). It passed through a variety of hands before being acquired in 1878 by G. P. Fuller, MP, of Neston Park and subsequently Major Robert Fuller (1875–1955), who restored it, using the sensitive local architect, Sir Harold Brakspear (who had also restored the cloisters at Lacock Abbey). He refurnished it with oak furniture and good Flemish tapestries, and in 1943 presented it to the National Trust. Most of the pictures, except the two here, belong to his grandson, Robert Floyd.