The site of Burton Constable was first occupied by a mediaeval pele tower. This was rebuilt as a brick house in the early Tudor period and further developed as a grand Elizabethan mansion by Sir John Constable in the 1560s.
The interiors were remodelled in a variety of Georgian idioms in the eighteenth century, most notably by Timothy Lightoler who was responsible for the staircase and neo-Jacobean Great Hall.