Stonor is a mostly cultivated and wooded village centred north of

Henley-on-Thames Henley-on-Thames ( ) is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, England, northeast of Reading, west of Maidenhead, southeast of Oxford and west of London (by road), near the tripoint of Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buc ...

South Oxfordshire South Oxfordshire is a local government district in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire, England. Its council is temporarily based outside the district at Abingdon-on-Thames pending a planned move to Didcot, the district's largest town. The a ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. 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. 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 A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

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 Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...

History

For most of its history Stonor was called Upper Assendon and was a

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

in an

exclave An enclave is a territory (or a small territory apart of a larger one) that is entirely surrounded by the territory of one other state or entity. Enclaves may also exist within territorial waters. ''Enclave'' is sometimes used improperly to deno ...

Pyrton Pyrton is a small village and large civil parish in Oxfordshire about north of the small town of Watlington and south of Thame. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 227. The toponym is from the Old English meaning "pear-tree ...

parish. In 1896 the detached part was made into a new

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

of Stonor, named after the adjacent

country house 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 town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

Stonor Park Stonor Park is a historic country house and private deer park situated in a valley in the Chiltern Hills at Stonor, about north of Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, England, close to the county boundary with Buckinghamshire. The house has a 12th ...

. In 1922 Stonor and

Pishill Pishill is a hamlet in Pishill with Stonor civil parish about north of Henley-on-Thames in South Oxfordshire. It is in the Stonor valley in the Chiltern Hills about above sea level. History The earliest known records of the toponym of Pi ...

civil parishes were merged. During and after the

English Reformation The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. These events were part of the wider European Protestant Reformation, a religious and poli ...

the Stonor family and many other local gentry were

recusants Recusancy (from la, recusare, translation=to refuse) was the state of those who remained loyal to the Catholic Church and refused to attend Church of England services after the English Reformation. The 1558 Recusancy Acts passed in the reign ...

. In 1581 the

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

priests

Edmund Campion Edmund Campion, SJ (25 January 15401 December 1581) 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 h ...

and Robert Parsons lived and worked at Stonor Park, and on 4 August 1581 a raid on the house found a press on which

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

publications had secretly been printed. 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. Despite continued prosecutions and fines the Stonors and a number of Upper Assendon families remained

throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, attending

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

at the Stonors' 12th century private

. Between 1716 and 1756

John Talbot Stonor John Talbot Stonor (1678–1756) was an English Roman Catholic bishop who served as the Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District from 1715 to 1756. Born in 1678, he was appointed the Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District and Titular Bishop of ' ...

Vicar Apostolic A vicar (; Latin: ''vicarius'') is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior (compare "vicarious" in the sense of "at second hand"). Linguistically, ''vicar'' is cognate with the English pre ...

of the Midland District used

as his headquarters. In the first half of the 19th century, the number of Roman Catholics in Upper Assendon increased, partly by local people converting, possibly aided by the fact that the only local school at the time was a Roman Catholic one endowed by the Stonors. The 1851 census recorded 50 Catholics in the village, but in the final quarter of the 19th century the numbers sharply declined.

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

Demography

The civil parish is more than 90% greenspace (10.61 km²) as at 2005 and had 139 homes in 2011.Key Statistics: Dwellings; Quick Statistics: Population Density; Physical Environment: Land Use Survey 2005
/ref>

Amenities

Stonor

Cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

Club was founded in 1797. It has occupied its current ground overlooking

for more than a century.Stonor Cricket Club
/ref>

References

Sources

External links

{{authority control Villages in Oxfordshire