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Stonor Park is a historic country house and private deer park situated in a valley in the Chiltern Hills at Stonor, about four miles (6.4 km) north of Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, England, close to the county boundary with Buckinghamshire.
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.
The house nestles in the Chiltern Hills. Behind the main house, there is a walled garden in an Italianate style on a rising slope, providing good views. Around the house is a park with a herd of fallow deer. Around the park are Almshill Wood, Balham's Wood and Kildridge Wood. The house and garden are open to the public.
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 1280, when Sir Richard Stonor (1250–1314) married his second wife, Margaret Harnhull. [1]
During and after the English Reformation the Stonor family and many other local gentry were recusants. In 1581, the Jesuit 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. [2] 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 at their private chapel. Between 1716 and 1756, John Talbot Stonor, Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District, used Stonor Park as his headquarters. [2]
The Stonor family's steadfast adherence to Roman Catholicism 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. [1]
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 sarsens and puddingstone. [3] The current stone positions are the result of re-positioning during 17th-century landscaping and 20th-century reconstruction. [4] The site is listed as a folly in the Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) (PRN 2064)). [5]
Stonor has been used as a filming location including The Pumaman (1980), The Living Daylights (1987), Danny, the Champion of the World (1989), [6] the final episode of One Foot in the Grave (2000), Endeavour (2019), A Christmas Carol (2019), and Antiques Roadshow (2020). [7]
Oxfordshire 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 Gloucestershire to the west. The city of Oxford is the largest settlement and county town.
Edmund Campion, SJ was an English Jesuit priest and martyr. While conducting an underground ministry in officially Anglican England, Campion was arrested by priest hunters. Convicted of high treason, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. Campion was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 and canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. His feast day is celebrated on 1 December.
Baddesley Clinton is a moated manor house, about 8 miles (13 km) north-west of the town of Warwick, in the village of Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire, England. The house probably originated in the 13th century, when large areas of the Forest of Arden were cleared for farmland. The site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and the house is a Grade I listed building. The house, park and gardens are owned by the National Trust and open to the public; they lie in a civil parish of the same name.
Ralph Thomas Campion George Sherman Stonor, 7th Baron Camoys, was a British peer and banker who served as Lord Chamberlain of the United Kingdom from 1998 to 2000, and the first Catholic Lord Chamberlain since the Reformation.
Watlington is a small market town and civil parish about 7 miles (11 km) south of Thame in Oxfordshire, near the county's eastern edge and less than 2 miles (3 km) from its border with Buckinghamshire. The parish includes the hamlets of Christmas Common, Greenfield and Howe Hill, all of which are in the Chiltern Hills. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 2,727.
Pishill is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Pishill with Stonor, in the South Oxfordshire district, in the county of Oxfordshire, England. It is about 5 miles (8 km) north of Henley-on-Thames, in the Stonor valley in the Chiltern Hills about 430 feet (130 m) above sea level. In 1921 the parish had a population of 147.
Kirtlington is a village and civil parish in Oxfordshire about 6+1⁄2 miles (10.5 km) west of Bicester. The parish includes the hamlet of Northbrook. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 988.
Launton is a village and civil parish on the eastern outskirts of Bicester, Oxfordshire, England. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 1,204.
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William Hartley was an English Roman Catholic priest. He is a Catholic martyr, beatified in 1929.
Pyrton is a small village and large civil parish in Oxfordshire about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the small town of Watlington and 5 miles (8 km) south of Thame. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 227. The toponym is from the Old English meaning "pear-tree farm".
Stonor is a mostly cultivated and wooded village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Pishill with Stonor, in the South Oxfordshire, district, in the county of Oxfordshire, England. It takes up part of the Stonor valley in the Chiltern Hills which rises to 120 meters above sea level within this south-east part of the civil parish, it is centred 3.8 miles (6.1 km) north of Henley-on-Thames. Stonor House close to the village centre has been the home of the Stonor family for more than eight centuries. The house and park are open to the public at certain times of the year. The house has a 12th-century private chapel built of flint and stone, with an early brick tower. There are also signs of a prehistoric stone circle in the park, which gives the place name its etymology.
Tusmore is a settlement in the civil parish of Hardwick with Tusmore, in the Cherwell district, in Oxfordshire, England, about 5+1⁄2 miles (9 km) north of Bicester. It is the location of the Tusmore country house and estate.
Hethe is a village and civil parish about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) north of Bicester in Oxfordshire, England.
Exlade Street is a hamlet in Checkendon civil parish in Oxfordshire, about 6 miles (9.7 km) northwest of Reading, in the Chiltern Hills. The hamlet is about 445 feet (136 m) above sea level.
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