The original house at Cefntilla dates from 1616 and is recorded as the manor house of the Oates family. During the
English Civil War, the Parliamentarian general
Thomas Fairfax established his headquarters at Cefntilla while laying siege to
Raglan Castle, some three miles to the north. In August 1646, the terms of surrender by the
Marquess of Worcester were signed "in the dining room of Mr Roger Oates' house of Kevntilla". By the 18th century, the court had become a farmhouse, and when, in the 19th century, it was bought by
Crawshay Bailey, the
ironmaster, as part of his Monmouthshire estate at
Llanfoist, the house was derelict. In 1856 Bailey sold the house to the Memorial Committee which had been established to commemorate the life of
Lord Raglan. Somerset fought in the
Napoleonic Wars, attaining the rank of
lieutenant colonel and serving on the staff of the
Duke of Wellington at the
Battle of Waterloo. He subsequently followed a political career and was raised to the
peerage as Baron Raglan of
Raglan in the County of
Monmouthshire in 1852. In 1855 he was appointed a full general and commander-in-chief of the British forces during the
Crimean War. He died in 1855 and was succeeded by his second son, Richard. In 1858, a group of the late Lord Raglan's "friends and admirers and comrades" purchased the house and estate as a memorial to him and presented it to Richard and his heirs in perpetuity. Richard engaged
Thomas Henry Wyatt to undertake complete rebuilding of the court in a
Tudor style. The Cefntilla estate passed by descent through the senior members of the Raglan family until the death of
FitzRoy Somerset, 5th Baron Raglan in 2010. While the barony passed to his younger brother
Geoffrey, the fifth lord bequeathed Cefntilla, its estate, and its major contents to the son of his sister, Henry van Moyland of
Los Angeles. This led to a legal dispute between family members, at the conclusion of which the Raglan collection of military memorabilia, and many of the contents of the house, were sold at auction. In 2015, the house itself was sold. The court is a private residence, but is available for hire as a wedding venue. Memorials to members of the Raglan branch of the Somerset family can be seen in
Church of St John, Llandenny. ==Architecture and description==