The title deeds to Best Western Ullesthorpe Court Hotel show that there has been a house there since before 1767, which was extended around 1800 by adding plain two-story farmhouse at the front. This was know as Four Elms Farm. In the seventeenth century a toll road led to Frolesworth with a gate at the bottom of Court Hill, the road from there to Frolesworth being merely a track.
Between 1915 and 1918, the new wing and museum and gallery were converted into a auxiliary hospital caring for twenty sick and wounded soldiers, and electric light was installed for this purpose. Mr & Mrs Goodacre and one nursing sister, who 'lived in', relied on men and women from the surrounding village to undertake voluntary light duties to help them run the hospital. Robert, the ghost of one of the soldiers, still haunts the building, according to reliable sources! There have also been account of local farming families entertaining the soldiers to tea.
During World War Two, the Court was once again requisitioned as an American Serviceman's Hospital, and hutted military barracks were set up in the field opposite. A young German pilot was shot down over Wolvey, and held by the Americans at the Court. Local people remember seeing him staring disconsolately out of an upstairs window! The soldiers were also frequent visitors at the local dances. For a short time after the war, the camp was used to house displaced persons from Europe but again when squatters moved into the empty huts, they were soon dismantled. The Court was never again used as a private residence, but converted into flats and then used as a grain store.
