Chastleton House () is a Jacobean country house at

Chastleton Chastleton is a village and civil parish in the Cotswold Hills in Oxfordshire, England, about northeast of Stow-on-the-Wold. Chastleton is in the extreme northwest of Oxfordshire, on the boundaries with both Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. T ...

, Oxfordshire, England, close to

Moreton-in-Marsh Moreton-in-Marsh is a market town in the Evenlode Valley, within the Cotswolds district and Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Gloucestershire, England. The town stands at the crossroads of the Fosse Way Roman road (now the A429) and the ...

(). It has been owned by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

since 1991 and is a

Grade I listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

Chastleton House was built between 1607 and 1612, possibly by

Robert Smythson Robert Smythson (1535 – 15 October 1614) was an English architect. Smythson designed a number of notable houses during the Elizabethan era. Little is known about his birth and upbringing—his first mention in historical records comes in 155 ...

, for Walter Jones, who had made his fortune from the law,"A Short Guide to Chastleton House", by Oliver Garnett, for The National Trust, 1997. although his family were originally Welsh wool merchants. The estate was bought in 1604 from

Robert Catesby Robert Catesby (c. 1572 – 8 November 1605) was the leader of a group of English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Born in Warwickshire, Catesby was educated in Oxford. His family were prominent recusant Catholics, and ...

, although his residence was demolished to make way for the new house and no traces of the original building on this spot remain. The house is built of

Cotswold stone The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jur ...

, around a small

courtyard A courtyard or court is a circumscribed area, often surrounded by a building or complex, that is open to the sky. Courtyards are common elements in both Western and Eastern building patterns and have been used by both ancient and contemporary ...

, called the Dairy Court. Chastleton House is famous for an episode from the

English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...

in which a loyal wife duped (and drugged)

Roundhead Roundheads were the supporters of the Parliament of England during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Also known as Parliamentarians, they fought against King Charles I of England and his supporters, known as the Cavaliers or Royalists, who ...

soldiers to save her husband. Sarah Jewell, granddaughter of the art critic Alan Clutton-Brock and his first wife Shelagh Archer, who died in a road accident in 1936,Farr, Dennis
"Brock, Alan Francis Clutton- (1904–1976)"
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, retrieved 7 February 2020 recalled her childhood reenactments of the scene when visiting her grandfather and his second wife Barbara (née Foy-Mitchell), the last owners of the manor (it having passed from the Jones family to the Clutton-Brocks, relatives by marriage): "My sisters and I used to love running around searching for the secret room where Arthur Jones, the grandson of Walter Jones, hid after the

Battle of Worcester The Battle of Worcester took place on 3 September 1651 in and around the city of Worcester, England and was the last major battle of the 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms. A Parliamentarian army of around 28,000 under Oliver Cromwell d ...

in 1651. Arthur was a Royalist and had been fighting for Charles II but the troops were defeated by

Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (25 April 15993 September 1658) was an English politician and military officer who is widely regarded as one of the most important statesmen in English history. He came to prominence during the 1639 to 1651 Wars of the Three Ki ...

and Arthur galloped back to Chastleton with Cromwell's soldiers in hot pursuit. His quick-witted wife, Sarah – my childhood heroine – hid him in the secret closet over the porch and although the pursuing soldiers found his exhausted horse in the stables they couldn't find him. Sarah saved Arthur's life by lacing the soldiers' beer with laudanum and saddling up one of their horses for his escape as the soldiers slumbered. My sisters and I used to lie on the bed in the secret room and pretend we could hear the horses galloping towards us. The bed has now gone and the entrance to the room is barred with one of the National Trust's trademarks: a rope."

Mary Whitmore Jones Mary Elizabeth Whitmore Jones ( 1823 – 1915) was an English author and the first female heir of Chastleton House. She was unmarried and did not have any children.J. Jaques & Son. After a few years she handed over the management of the estate to her nephew, Thomas Whitmore Harris. The house was then rented and Mary moved into Chastleton Rectory as a lodger. She died in 1915.''Mary and Thomas Whitmore-Jones: A heavy burden''
at nationaltrust.org.uk. Retrieved 2 January 2022.

External and internal features

Chastleton House is different from other houses of its type in several respects. It has never had a park with a long, landscaped approach such as many other houses of its era. Rather it was built within an existing settlement, Chastleton village, which provided many of the services for the house which would otherwise have been attached, such as a laundry, a fishpond and a bakehouse. Secondly, until its acquisition by the Trust in 1991, it was owned by the same family for nearly 400 years. Its treatment by the Trust was similarly unusual, with a policy of

conservation Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws. Conservation may also refer to: Environment and natural resources * Nature conservation, the protection and managem ...

(often called 'controlled decay') rather than

restoration Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to: * Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage ** Audio restoration ** Film restoration ** Image restoration ** Textile restoration * Restoration ecology ...

, enabling visitors to see the house largely as it was when acquired.Nicholas Cooper, Stephen Freer and Jonathan Marsden, ''Chastleton House'', (London: The National Trust (Enterprises), 2001) p. 5. As a result of the Trust's approach, a large number of the rooms in the house are open to the public. Of particular note is the Long Gallery, with its barrel vaulted ceiling, with a length . This is an impressive feature surviving from the period, although the gallery at

Montacute House Montacute House is a late Elizabethan era, Elizabethan mansion with a garden in Montacute, South Somerset. An example of English architecture during a period that was moving from the medieval Gothic to the Renaissance Classical, and one of fe ...

in Somerset is of a similar age and at , is the longest in England. Like much of the house, the Long Gallery ceiling has been subject to damage. The neglect of the roof for almost two centuries led to the failing of part of the plaster ceiling in the early 1800s, but it was not repaired until 1904–1905, when two local men were engaged to make good the losses. DerelictJacobeanWindow

Also of interest is the impressive Great Chamber. Designed for the entertainment of the most important guests and for the playing of music, the design scheme has its roots in

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

Italy and is the most impressive in the house. The setting out of the panelling shows some inspiration from the classical, as do the painted roundels around the frieze, depicting the twelve prophets of the Old Testament and the twelve

Sibyl The sibyls (, singular ) were prophetesses or oracles in Ancient Greece. The sibyls prophesied at holy sites. A sibyl at Delphi has been dated to as early as the eleventh century BC by PausaniasPausanias 10.12.1 when he described local tradi ...

s or Prophetesses of Antiquity. Also in the Great Chamber are a set of Jacobite '' Fiat'' glasses engraved with the Jacobite emblems of roses, oakleaves, and a compass rose, which betray the family's eighteenth-century sympathies. These probably belonged to Henry Jones IV, who was the president of the Gloucestershire Cycle Club, one of the oldest established Jacobite clubs.Nicholas Cooper, Stephen Freer and Jonathan Marsden, ''Chastleton House'', (London: The National Trust (Enterprises), 2001) pp. 21–24. Other items of interest in the house include the Juxon Bible, which is said to have been used by the chaplain, William Juxon, at the execution of

Charles I Charles I may refer to: Kings and emperors * Charlemagne (742–814), numbered Charles I in the lists of Holy Roman Emperors and French kings * Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), also king of Albania, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily * Charles I of ...

. William Juxon had been Bishop of London and became Archbishop of Canterbury after the Restoration. His family lived locally in Little Compton until they died out in the eighteenth century, when it is thought to have been given to John Jones II because the Jones clan were another family with Jacobite sympathies. In 1919 a number of significant

tapestries Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike most woven textiles, where both the warp and the weft threads may ...

were discovered at the house, and were interpreted as evidence for the establishment of a tapestry-weaving venture at the manor house of William Sheldon (d 1570) at Barcheston, near

Shipston-on-Stour Shipston-on-Stour is a town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon District in Warwickshire, England. It is located on the banks of the River Stour, Warwickshire, River Stour, points of the compass, south-southeast of Stratford-upon-Avon, 10 ...

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Av ...

. One of these tapestries is currently on display in the Middle Chamber, and another is in the permanent collection of the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

in London.

Chastleton Garden

The Grade II listed garden at Chastleton has undergone a number of revisions since the completion of the house in 1612. There is no archaeological evidence of a garden on this site before this date: indeed, the North Garden is split by an old field boundary. There is no map or written evidence to suggest how the garden was laid out by Walter Jones in 1612, but the walls that enclose the garden are 17th-century, and archaeological evidence that suggests that the garden has been laid out the same way for the last 400 years. It is laid out according to the recommendation proposed by

Gervase Markham Gervase (or Jervis) Markham (ca. 1568 – 3 February 1637) was an English poet and writer. He was best known for his work '' The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman'', first publishe ...

in his book ''The English Husbandman'' (1613) – a forecourt to the front of the house, with the base (or bass) court on one side, which included the stables and other farm buildings. The other two sides of the house should be composed of gardens, divided into an orchard, a kitchen garden and a best (or pleasure) garden, planted with more ornamental plants.CC Landscape Management, Chastleton Garden Conservation Plan (Oxfordshire, Chastleton: January 2012). At the time, the forecourt at Chastleton described the entrance area below the House court (the area directly in front of the house). The House court was raised slightly above the forecourt by a small retaining wall, probably with a balustrade on top. There were likely to be few plants in the front of the house in the early 17th century, with the House Court possibly being paved or having two grass plats on each side of the central path like the forecourt. Ziergarten Chastleton

To the east of this was the Pleasaunce or Pleasure Garden. This was the Best Garden, which was levelled, but with a viewing terrace along one side which also gave entrance to the church at the opposite end. The design of this garden is not known, but it was almost certainly surrounded by high walls with fruit trees trained against it. The Best Garden was laid out in the circular pattern we see today by Dorothy Whitmore Jones in 1833, although it is suggested that there were already box plants there. Beds were added within the circular hedge in the 1890s or 1900s and then grassed over again by 1972. During the periods of time when money came into the family the planting in this garden was always renewed.

Birthplace of croquet

To the north are terraces, levelled from the sloping ground. There is evidence of a medieval cultivation terrace and the remnants of the old boundary wall of the garden. There was a

Bowling Green A bowling green is a finely laid, close-mown and rolled stretch of turf for playing the game of bowls. Before 1830, when Edwin Beard Budding of Thrupp, near Stroud, UK, invented the lawnmower, lawns were often kept cropped by grazing sheep ...

on the Middle terrace and the third terrace may also have been the site of the original kitchen garden. Today, the middle terraces are the site of two

croquet Croquet ( or ; french: croquet) is a sport that involves hitting wooden or plastic balls with a mallet through hoops (often called "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Its international governing body is the W ...

lawns, originally laid out by Walter Whitmore-Jones in the 1860s. His version of the rules of croquet published in '' The Field'' in 1865 became definitive, and Chastleton is considered the birthplace of croquet as a competitive sport. Equipment is provided by the National Trust and in the summer visitors may play a game of croquet if they wish. The Kitchen Garden as it is now was enclosed in 1847 and was formed of the existent garden and from part of the adjoining field. It was laid out as four plots on one side of a broad path and two on the other side, and the kitchen garden today has been recently rejuvenated to form this pattern as well.

Film location

Chastleton House was used as one of the locations for the 2015 BBC Two television series ''

Wolf Hall ''Wolf Hall'' is a 2009 historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate, named after the Seymour family's seat of Wolfhall, or Wulfhall, in Wiltshire. Set in the period from 1500 to 1535, ''Wolf Hall'' is a symp ...

'' and represented '

,' home of the Seymours. It also featured as Boot Magna Hall in the 1987 ITV film of Evelyn Waugh's novel 'Scoop'.DVD issued by Network 7953198. Original ITV transmission 26 04 1987.

References

External links

Chastleton House information at the National Trust

List of paintings on view
{{Authority control Country houses in Oxfordshire National Trust properties in Oxfordshire Historic house museums in Oxfordshire Grade I listed houses in Oxfordshire Houses completed in 1612 1612 establishments in England Grade II* listed parks and gardens in Gloucestershire