Ramsbury Manor  Ramsbury Manor is a Grade I listed country house at Ramsbury, Wiltshire, on the River Kennet between Hungerford and Marlborough, in the south of England. It belongs to the Capricorn Foundation, a trust which has the task of maintaining the house as a museum and cultural resource for the nation. The house dates from the 1680s, apart from an earlier stable building. It has two storeys and an attic, with nine bays at the front; to the south is a courtyard of cottages for servants. The gates are flanked by panelled ashlar columns, each bearing a lion supporting a shield. On each side is a square lodge, also in ashlar. In 1966 the house was recorded as Grade I listed, and the east gate and lodges as Grade II*. At the same time the mid-17th century stables to the south of the house were listed at Grade II. The gardens dating from the late 17th century and early 18th, and a kitchen garden begun later in the 18th century, are listed Grade II on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The property is set in parkland of 153 acres, or about 62 hectares. Designed by Dr Robert Hooke, the house is considered one of the best examples of his work, being dignified and built to the highest standards of the time. An earlier Ramsbury Manor House was built on the site in 1560 for the Earl of Pembroke. Only its timber-framed stable block to the northeast now survives. In 1676, Sir William Jones bought the estate. He wanted a country house to match his status and turned to Robert Hooke, one of the leading architects of the day, whom he already knew from work Hooke had supervised on Jones's town house in Bloomsbury. Hooke met Jones at least five times in 1681 and probably provided him with plans of the existing house. Construction of the house began about 1681, and it was still unfinished when Jones died in May 1682. The main structure of the house was completed in 1683, but work on the interior continued until 1686. The house stayed in the Jones family until the death of Elizabeth Jones in 1800. Her husband Sir William Langham Jones, owner from 1766 to 1791, made improvements to the house and park which included a five-arch ornamental bridge over a weir to turn the Kennet into a lake, the east lodges, and the orangery at the south front of the house.