The house stands on the site of the medieval Wilton Abbey. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, King Henry VIII presented the abbey and its attached estates to William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, in 1542. Herbert, a soldier of fortune and favorite of the King, was married to Anne Parr, the sister of Queen Catherine Parr. Between 1544 and 1563, Herbert constructed a Tudor mansion on the site.
During the reign of Mary I, Herbert was briefly dispossessed when the Catholic religion was restored. According to John Aubrey, the Earl returned to the abbey gates to apologize to the Lady Abbess, only to forcibly evict the nuns again upon the succession of Elizabeth I. During the 16th century, the house became the base for the Wilton Circle, a highly influential literary group led by Mary Sidney, wife of the 2nd Earl. The circle included poets such as Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel.
The original Tudor house lasted approximately 80 years. In 1603, the royal court of King James I stayed at Wilton to escape the plague in London. During this visit, the King’s Men, a theater company including John Heminges, were paid £30 to perform a play, believed to be Shakespeare's As You Like It.
Architectural development reached a turning point in 1630 when the 4th Earl decided to replace the southern wing. He engaged Inigo Jones, who provided sketches for a new complex of state rooms. The execution of the work was largely delegated to Isaac de Caus, a French landscape gardener. De Caus originally planned a facade twice the length of the current structure, but the project was curtailed, possibly due to the outbreak of the Civil War or the 4th Earl’s fall from royal favor.
The south front is considered a triumph of Palladian architecture in Britain. It features a low rusticated ground floor and a piano nobile dominated by a double-height Venetian window. Following a fire in 1647, Inigo Jones returned to the project alongside his nephew by marriage, John Webb. Together, they redesigned the interior of the seven state rooms located on the piano nobile.
These rooms were designed for visiting members of the royal family. The most significant is the Double Cube Room, measuring 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 30 feet high. Completed around 1653, it features white pine walls decorated with gilded swags of fruit and foliage, a coffered ceiling by Thomas de Critz, and a collection of Van Dyck portraits. The adjacent Single Cube Room, a 30-foot square, is the only interior thought to have survived the 1647 fire intact.
In 1705, the 8th Earl rebuilt portions of the house to display the Arundel marbles, forming the foundation of the estate's sculpture collection.
In 1801, the 11th Earl commissioned James Wyatt to modernize the house and increase gallery space. Wyatt’s intervention was controversial; he demolished the Tudor Great Hall, the chapel, and the "Holbein Porch," which was a 16th-century entrance pavilion. Wyatt replaced these with a Gothic-style entrance and a two-storeyed cloister gallery built around the inner courtyard. The cloisters were designed to link the rooms and display the Pembroke collection of classical sculpture. Wyatt and the Earl quarreled over the designs, and the work was eventually finished by Wyatt's nephew, Sir Jeffry Wyatville, around 1824.
The Wilton estate remains a significant agricultural and commercial entity. As of 2025, it is the residence of William Herbert, 18th Earl of Pembroke. The estate encompasses 14,000 acres divided into 14 farms and more than 200 residential properties. The operation employs approximately 140 people. While the family occupies a third of the house privately, the house and gardens have been open to the public since 1951.
The architectural historian Sir John Summerson described the estate as a scene accomplished by a "combination of accident, selection, genius and the tides of taste." The house has also become a frequent location for film and television productions, including The Crown, Bridgerton, and Pride & Prejudice.
The grounds of Wilton House contain several Grade I listed structures and gardens. Isaac de Caus began landscaping the grounds in 1632, creating one of the first French parterres in England. The Palladian Bridge, built between 1736 and 1737 by the 9th Earl and Roger Morris, spans the River Nadder. Its design, based on a rejected Palladio plan for the Rialto Bridge, was later copied at Stowe, Prior Park, and by Catherine the Great at Tsarskoye Selo.
Other notable estate buildings include Washern Grange, a 1630s rebuilding of a stable block that incorporates a 14th-century barn, and a triumphal entrance arch designed by Sir William Chambers, which supports a lead equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.
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