In this week's Footsteps Gerry Brooke heads off beyond Pensford to historic Hunstrete House.

Hunstrete's origins stretch back to Saxon times when, like a lot of Somerset, it was part of the rich lands belonging to Glastonbury Abbey.

The estate later passed into the hands of the wealthy Popham family who already owned extensive property around the Wellington area.

Sir John Popham, the first of the family to own Hunstrete, was the Lord Chief Justice who presided over the trials of Mary Queen of Scots and Guy Fawkes.

In 1607, Sir John's nephew George led an expedition to set up a new colony in North America.

But after his untimely death most of the settlers from Fort St George, as the colony in Maine was known, returned to England.

By the 1750s, either Edward Popham, or his son Francis, decided that their medieval manor house had to go.

His new mansion, had it ever been completed, would have been 200 feet long and 120 feet wide - one of the largest in the country.

But after nearly thirty years - and with the death of childless Dorothy Popham in 1797 - the project ground to a halt.

The enormous expense had been almost too much for the family to bear.

The inheritors of the estate, the Leyborne's, assumed the Popham name but chose instead to live at Littlecote House in Wiltshire.

Although the uncompleted mansion remained uninhabited a building called The Lodge - it may have been built to house the family while their grand project was underway - was extended and upgraded.

It's this much altered and added to building which makes up the core of today's Hunstrete House hotel.

All that remains today of the great grand design are five arches - part of an impressive front portico which make a romantic folly next to the lake.

But the ornamental plaster work, mahogany doors, fireplaces, a staircase and some statues were saved and used to refurbish Bath's Prior Park following a fire.

A Time Team programme which visited Hunstrete to explore the site of the medieval manor house discovered that the 1750's planned mansion was in reality just the addition of a new exterior to a previous building.

During World War II the property passed to Major Eric Popham, but the huge cost of running such a large estate meant that his family would be the last of the Pophams to live there.

In 1956, after 350 years, it finally passed out of their hands to become the private home of Sir Christopher and Lady Chancellor.

In the 1970s John Dupays, who could see Hunstrete's potential, bought the property and turned it into an award winning hotel.

The hotel, which sits in 70 acres complete with its own lake and deer park, is now run by the von Essen group.