Hilaria de Cotehele

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Cotehele (Cornish: Kosheyl) is a mediaeval house with Tudor additions, situated in the parish of Calstock in the east of Cornwall, England. It is a rambling granite and slate-stone manor house on the banks of the River Tamar that has been little changed over six centuries. This fortified manor house is set on a high bluff on the Cornish bank of the river, which gave natural protection from skirmishing armies approaching from the east.

In the 14th century, the de Cotehele family was one of Cornwall’s most powerful. Ralph and Hilaria de Cotehele, the orphaned children of this dynasty, were the wards of John, Earl of Cornwall, brother of the King, Edward III. In 1353, Hilaria, heiress to her brother’s estates, married William Edgcumbe and brought to the union her land at Cotehele.

The Edgcumbes, her new husband William’s family, actually originated from the Devon side of the Tamar, near Tavistock. In the 13th century, the family is recorded as living in the parish of Milton Abbot, where many buildings still bear the Edgcumbe name today. William Edgcumbe’s elder brother John, despite remaining in Milton Abbot, founded a second line of the family in Cornwall, with descendents based at Tregeare, near Launceston.

For five centuries, the Edgcumbes were based at Cotehele, near Saltash. Now owned by the National Trust, Cotehele is a Tudor mansion built by Sir Richard Edgcumbe and his son, Sir Piers, during the late 15th and early 16th centuries.