Mapledurham House | |
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Location | Mapledurham, Oxfordshire, England |
Coordinates | 51°29′5.28″N1°2′7.80″W / 51.4848000°N 1.0355000°W Coordinates: 51°29′5.28″N1°2′7.80″W / 51.4848000°N 1.0355000°W |
Built | c.1585 |
Governing body | Mapledurham Estate |
Listed Building – Grade I | |
Official name | Mapledurham House |
Designated | 24 October 1951 |
Reference no. | 1368944 |
Mapledurham House is an Elizabethan stately home located in the civil parish of Mapledurham in the English county of Oxfordshire. It is a Grade I listed building, first listed on 24 October 1951. [1] [2]
The manor of Mapledurham was bought in 1490 by Richard Blount of Iver however the current house was started by Sir Michael Blount (c1530-1610) and has remained in the Blount-Eyston family to this day. [2] [3] [4] Building was started around 1585, at the time of the Spanish Armada, [2] in the classic Elizabethan E-shape.[ citation needed ] It includes a late 18th-century chapel built in the Strawberry Hill Gothic style for the recusant Roman Catholic owners of the house.
Prior to the Catholic Emancipation, the owners would hide priests in its priest holes, some of which were only discovered in the 21st century, and secretly celebrate Mass with a makeshift altar hidden inside a writing desk. [4] The estate covers much of the village including Mapledurham Watermill and part of the church.
Anne of Denmark stayed at Mapledurham in August 1612 as a guest of Sir Richard Blount, before meeting James VI and I at Woodstock Palace. [5]
The poet Alexander Pope was a frequent visitor to the house as he was enamoured of two daughters of the Blount family.[ citation needed ] The house and surrounding village were used for the filming of the 1976 film of The Eagle Has Landed and also for several television series, including Midsomer Murders . [6] It is also reputed to have been the inspiration for E. H. Shepard's illustrations of Toad Hall for Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows , although this is also claimed by Hardwick House, Fowey Hall Hotel, [7] Foxwarren Park [8] and Fawley Court. [9]
Sight-seeing helicopter flights run from the estate, with up to 70 short flights per day, caused complaints about noise levels, with one local resident describing it in 2013 as like being "in Vietnam during a high intensity attack". A representative of the estate responded by saying that they had taken account of the complaints by reducing the number of helicopter flight days from 20 to 10 per year. [10] [11]
Oxfordshire is a historic, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily due to the work of the University of Oxford. Oxfordshire is locally governed by Oxfordshire County Council, together with the lower tier councils of its five non-metropolitan districts: City of Oxford, Cherwell, South Oxfordshire, Vale of White Horse, and West Oxfordshire. The ceremonial county is landlocked and bordered by Northamptonshire to the north-east, Warwickshire to the north-west, Buckinghamshire to the east, Berkshire to the south, Wiltshire to the south-west, and Gloucestershire to the west. The areas of Oxfordshire south of the River Thames were part of the historic county of Berkshire, including the county's highest point, the 261-metre (856 ft) White Horse Hill.
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Mapledurham Watermill is a historic watermill in the civil parish of Mapledurham in the English county of Oxfordshire. It is driven by the head of water created by Mapledurham Lock and Weir, on the River Thames. The mill was built in the 15th century, and further extended in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It is a Grade II* listed building and is preserved in an operational state.
Mapledurham is a small village, civil parish and country estate beside the River Thames in southern Oxfordshire. The large parish borders Caversham, the most affluent major district of Reading, Berkshire. Historic buildings in the area include the Church of England parish church of St. Margaret, Mapledurham Watermill and Mapledurham House.
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Gribbin Head is a promontory on the south coast of Cornwall, England, UK, owned and managed by the National Trust. It separates St Austell Bay from the estuary of the River Fowey and is marked by a large tower used to aid navigation of ships approaching the local harbours. The nearest town is Fowey. The western point of the headland is called Little Gribbin.
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