Athelhampton House
Athelhampton House, in Dorset,was a 326-year-old pigsty at the start of the Regency period. The ground floorof the Tudor Great Hall, built in 1485, and the connected West Wing, had becomehome to pigs and poultry. And they had been that way for decades.

Today Athelhampton is one ofEngland’s finest Tudor mansions. It was pretty impressive when it was built, buta visitor in the Regency period would have seen it as a tired, rundown relic ofa farmhouse. Little more than an or...