estateCountry House Rescue · Season 4, Episode 2 · Aired June 21, 2012
Chapel Cleeve Manor
Chapel Cleeve, West Somerset
Yes. This one is still open.
On the show
Season 4, Episode 2 · June 21, 2012 · country house
P2 SPINE-FIX: city resolved
What happened after
1450s pilgrims'-hostel-turned-manor (hotel in the 1980s, fell into disrepair after) purchased in 2021 by interior designer Marten Street; now operates 'Star Dome' luxury glamping-style stays (6 rooms, up to 20 guests) funding an active restoration project, plus a small number of exclusive events (3 reception rooms, capacity to 150).
What happened on the show
Chapel Cleeve Manor carries fifteenth-century bones and a long history of changing hands, having served over the centuries as a refuge for pilgrims and, more recently, a hotel. The version Simon Davis walked into was starker. Jeannie Wilkins and her partner had bought the Grade II listed house in West Somerset in 1998 for three hundred and sixty thousand pounds and renovated it with the help of friends, but after thirty-three years together the couple had parted. That left Jeannie, then sixty-three, living alone in a fifteen-bedroom manor and getting by on around a hundred pounds a week, close to bankruptcy yet determined to protect a genuinely important piece of Britain's heritage at Chapel Cleeve. She called in Simon Davis for radical solutions. The hard question of the episode was whether he could find a way for Jeannie to keep living in her beloved house, and whether she would accept sharing it with strangers if that turned out to be the only route to its survival.
After the cameras left
Chapel Cleeve Manor has moved on to new ownership and a new model. As of our latest verification pass the medieval house was bought in 2021 by the interior designer Marten Street, who now runs Star Dome luxury glamping-style stays, six rooms sleeping up to twenty, to fund an active restoration, alongside a small number of exclusive events across three reception rooms with capacity to around a hundred and fifty. We fetched the official site directly and confirmed the current stays-and-events offering. So Jeannie Wilkins' fight to keep the house standing did not end with her living there, but the manor at Chapel Cleeve is safe and trading, its restoration now paid for by the paying-guest model the series always pointed these houses toward.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.