A day out in Oxfordshire: Chastleton House

Last night I watched Diana our Mother on ITV. I found it quite moving.  I'm not a Royalist but I liked Diana and was sad when she died tragically and senselessly, the weekend we moved to Newbury.  As someone who has lost their mother,  it was really quite therapeutic.  Like me, the sons didn't cry.  It's too much.

Blackcurrants from Greenham Common with my porridge to cheer me up.

Today we are meeting our Lichfield friends at the 'rare gem of a Jacobean country house'  Chastleton House, which was built between 1607 and 1612 by Walter Jones, a prosperous wool merchant and lawyer.  It was owned by this increasingly impoverished family until 1991, and the house has remained essentially unchanged for nearly 400 years.

First stop is a picnic lunch 

Then we head down to the house.  The estate was bought in 1604 from a Robery Catesby, whose residence was demolished to make way for the new house and no traces of the original building on this spot remain.  We walk past the Dovecote. 

The house is built of Cotswold stone, round a small courtyward, called the Dairy Court.

It 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, its treatment by the Trust was similarly unusual, with a policy of conservation rather than restoration, enabling visitors to see the house largely as it was when acquired.

 

Chastleton House is famous for an episode from the Civil War.  Arthur Jones, Walter's grandson narrowly escaped being slaughtered by the Roundheads.  Following the Battle of Worcester in 1651, the Royalists were defeated by Cromwell and Arthur galloped back to Chastleton with Cromwell's soldiers in hot pursuit. His quick-witted wife, Sarah 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. 

The House was used as one of the locations for the television series Wolf Hall, representing Wolf Hall itself, the home of the Seymours.

The church is seen on the right as we approach.

 

The entrance hall

Here is the Long Gallery, which is indeed the longest surviving of it's kind.   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 1904-05, when two local men were engaged to make good the losses.

 

This chest is 16th century Spanish, they are not sure what it is doing here but it could be from the Armada 

 

Here we have a 19th century exercise machine! Note the spring.

 

A 17th century window in the Great Hall

In the 18th century no male heirs were available.  The lady of the manor whose name I forget cleared all the debts and mabe this beautiful quilt.  
 

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 Italy.

This is the original ceiling 

The house was built on cusp of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and hence called Jacobethan.  The tudor rose persists

Here is the interesting story of the last owner Barbara Clutton-Brock 
quite a character!  This is her bedroom 

Other items of interest in the house include the Juxon Bible, which is said to have been used by the chaplain, Bishop Juxon, at the execution of Charles I. Juxon’s family lived locally in Long Compton until his family died out in the 18th century, when it is thought to have been given to John Jones II because the Jones’ were another family with Jacobite sympathies.

Here is the kitchen which was used till the 30s 

The 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. 

Today, the middle terraces are the site of two croquet lawns, originally laid out by Walter Whitmore-Jones in the 1860s. His version of the rules of croquet became definitive, and Chastleton is considered the birthplace of croquet as a competitive sport.

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.

Lastly to the church where the sculpture Richard Westmacott is buried.  He left a fortune to the Royal Academy Schools.  

We finished a wonderful and interesting day in the lovely garden on the Tite Inn