Stonor Park is a historic

country house image:Blenheim - Blenheim Palace - 20210417125239.jpg, 300px, Blenheim Palace - Oxfordshire An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a Townhou ...

and private deer park situated in a valley in the

Chiltern Hills The Chiltern Hills or the Chilterns are a chalk escarpment in southern England, located to the north-west of London, covering across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire; they stretch from Goring-on-Thames in the south- ...

at Stonor, about north of

Henley-on-Thames Henley-on-Thames ( ) is a town status in the United Kingdom, town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish on the River Thames, in the South Oxfordshire district, in Oxfordshire, England, northeast of Reading, Berkshire, Reading, west of M ...

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire ( ; abbreviated ''Oxon'') is a ceremonial county in South East England. The county is bordered by Northamptonshire and Warwickshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the east, Berkshire to the south, and Wiltshire and Glouceste ...

, England, close to the county boundary with

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (, abbreviated ''Bucks'') is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshir ...

. The house has a 12th-century private chapel. The remains of a prehistoric stone circle are in the grounds. It is the ancestral home and seat of the Stonor family, Baron Camoys. The current Lord Camoys is William Stonor.

Setting

The house nestles in the

. Behind the main house, there is a walled garden in an

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

style on a rising slope, providing good views. Around the house is a park with a herd of

fallow deer Fallow deer is the common name for species of deer in the genus ''Dama'' of subfamily Cervinae. There are two living species, the European fallow deer (''Dama dama''), native to Europe and Anatolia, and the Persian fallow deer (''Dama mesopotamic ...

. Around the park are Almshill Wood, Balham's Wood and Kildridge Wood. The house and garden are open to the public.

History

Stonor House from the Deer Park - geograph

Stonor House has been the home of the Stonor family for more than eight centuries. In the house are displays of family portraits, tapestries, bronzes and ceramics. The house has a 12th-century private chapel built of flint and stone, with an early brick tower. The house was probably begun after , when Sir Richard Stonor (1250–1314) married his second wife, Margaret Harnhull. During and after the

English Reformation The English Reformation began in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away first from the authority of the pope and bishops Oath_of_Supremacy, over the King and then from some doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church ...

the Stonor family and many other local gentry were recusants. In 1581, the

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

priests Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons lived and worked at Stonor Park, and Campion's ''Decem Rationes'' was printed here on a secret press. On 4 August 1581, a raid on the house found the press. Campion and Parsons had left a few days earlier, but the elderly Lady Cecily Stonor, her son John, the Jesuit priest William Hartley, the printers and four servants were taken prisoner, and in 1585, Hartley was exiled.Lobel, 1964, pages 98–115. Despite further prosecutions and fines the Stonors remained Roman Catholic throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and enabled many local villagers to remain Roman Catholic by allowing them to attend

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

at their private chapel. Between 1716 and 1756, John Talbot Stonor, Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District, used Stonor Park as his headquarters. The Stonor family's steadfast adherence to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

throughout the reformation led to their marginalisation and relative impoverishment in subsequent centuries. This has inadvertently resulted in the preservation of the house in a relative unspoiled and unimproved state.

Stone circle

The house was built on the site of a prehistoric stone circle or henge and this has given it its name. The remains of the circle are still visible with one stone incorporated into the south-east corner of the chapel. The stones are a mixture of

sarsen Sarsen stones are silicification, silicified sandstone blocks found extensively across southern England on the Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire; in Kent; and in smaller quantities in Berkshire, Essex, Oxfordshire, Dorset, an ...

s and puddingstone. The current stone positions are the result of re-positioning during 17th-century landscaping and 20th-century reconstruction. The site is listed as a folly in the Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) (PRN 2064)).

Media appearances

Stonor has been used as a filming location including '' The Pumaman'' (1980), '' The Living Daylights'' (1987), '' Danny, the Champion of the World'' (1989), the final episode of ''

One Foot in the Grave ''One Foot in the Grave'' is a British television British sitcom, sitcom written by David Renwick. There were six series (each consisting of six half-hour episodes) and seven Christmas specials over a period of ten years from early 1990 to late ...

'' (2000), '' Endeavour'' (2019), ''

A Christmas Carol ''A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas'', commonly known as ''A Christmas Carol'', is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. It recounts the ...

'' (2019), and '' Antiques Roadshow'' (2020).

Bibliography

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References

External links

Stonor official website

Stonor Cricket Club official website
{{South Oxfordshire Gardens in Oxfordshire Henley-on-Thames Country houses in Oxfordshire Parks and open spaces in Oxfordshire Tourist attractions in Oxfordshire Grade I listed houses in Oxfordshire Historic house museums in Oxfordshire Stone circles in Oxfordshire History of Oxfordshire Grade II* listed parks and gardens in Buckinghamshire