In 1517, the manor of Horton was granted to William Knight, a well-connected clergyman who had studied at both Oxford and the University of Ferrara in Italy. Knight was no ordinary country prebendary. He served as Prothonotary to the Holy See, attended Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and in 1527 was dispatched to Rome to negotiate the king's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He would eventually become Bishop of Bath and Wells.
Around 1521, Knight rebuilt the house at Horton around the existing Norman hall, importing architectural ideas he had absorbed during years of travel in Italy. The front doorway features grotesque carved jambs in a distinctly Renaissance style, making Horton Court one of the earliest English buildings — alongside Sutton Place in Surrey and Hampton Court — to display Italian decorative motifs.
“Knight's most extraordinary creation stands in the garden: a six-bay ambulatory built around 1527.”
Knight's most extraordinary creation stands in the garden: a six-bay ambulatory built around 1527. Part medieval cloister, part Italian loggia, its octagonal piers and four-centred arches combine Perpendicular Gothic structure with Renaissance spirit. Knight had almost certainly seen Bramante's loggias at the Vatican's Cortile del Belvedere. Built into the ambulatory's back wall are four stucco roundels depicting Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Nero, and Attila — a curious quartet whose selection remains unexplained. Both the ambulatory and the house are Grade I listed. The garden also retains fragments of Knight's original Renaissance layout, including a pond, terraced lawns, and the remains of medieval fish ponds.
