Tyntesfield, one of the last High Victorian houses to have survived with its character and historic contents substantially intact, was acquired by the National Trust in 2002, with a donation from the NHMF.

It was built by John Norton of Bristol between 1863–1865 and the chapel, a tour de force of the Gothic Revival, by Arthur Blomfield between 1872–1877, for William Gibbs (1790–1875), a philanthropic High Anglican, who had made a fortune in guano – bird droppings from islands off Peru – a potent agricultural fertiliser.

The majority of the pictures are of the nineteenth century British School, notably Sir Augustus Wall Calcott’s vast 'Passage and Luggage Boats' and Lorimer’s portrait of the novelist Charlotte M. Yonge. Exceptions being: the Spanish 'Saint Lawrence with his Gridiron, Crowned by a Putto-Angel' attributed to Juan Luis Zambrano, in its magnificently idiosyncratic frame; 'Tobias and the Angel' by Gerrit Willemsz. Horst and a Flemish tavern scene: 'A Poor Company at a Table in a Rustic Kitchen (Le petit chaurdon)' by Willem van Herp I; the fine Bellini and studio Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist, is currently out on loan to Bristol City Art Gallery.