Snowshill Manor is a National Trust property located in the village of Snowshill, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. It is a sixteenth-century country house, best known for its twentieth-century owner, Charles Paget Wade, an eccentric who amassed an enormous collection of objects that interested him. He gave the property to the National Trust in 1951, and his collection is still housed there. Manor house The property is a typical Cotswold manor house, made from local stone; the main part of the house dates from the 16th century. It is a Grade II* listed building, having been so designated since 4 July 1960. Also listed are the brewhouse, the dovecote, some of the garden buildings, the wall and gate-piers, and the group of four Manor Cottages. History Snowshill Manor was given to Winchcombe Abbey in 821 by King Coenwulf of Mercia. Two hundred and sixty four years later, the village and Manor were listed in the Domesday Book (1085) as Snawesille, property of the Abbey of Saint Mary of Winchcombe. The Manor remained the property of the Abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when it was confiscated by King Henry VIII, who included the Manor in his dowry to his last queen, Catherine Parr, in 1543. The earliest surviving part of the Manor, the rooms named and now known as Dragon, Nadir, Ann's, Music and Seraphim by Charles Paget Wade, was built around 1550 and it is probable that this section of the Manor was joined to a contemporaneous building to the south, which was later demolished. In the 1600s the Manor was again extended southwards and attic rooms added. In the early part of the 18th century the house was owned by one William Sambach, who added extra rooms on the south-west corner in about 1720. He also added a new main door in the south front, placing the Sambach coat of arms in the pediment above it, which is now the main entrance to the house. After several further changes of owner, John Small of Clapham took over the property, being the first of a series of absentee landlords: for the next 150 years the house was occupied by tenant farmers, until its purchase in 1919 by Charles Paget Wade. Wade was an architect, artist-craftsman, collector, poet and heir to the family fortune. He restored the property, living in the small cottage in the garden and using the