Stonor Park is a historic

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 peop ...

and private deer park situated in a valley in the

Chiltern Hills The Chiltern Hills is a chalk escarpment in England. The area, northwest of London, covers stretching from Goring-on-Thames in the southwest to Hitchin in the northeast - across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, and Bedfordshi ...

Stonor Stonor is a mostly cultivated and wooded village centred north of Henley-on-Thames in South 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 pa ...

, about 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 Buckin ...

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of 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, primaril ...

, England, close to the county boundary with

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-e ...

. 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 barony of Camoys was created twice. From 26 November 1313 to 1 April 1335 Ralph de Camoys (d.1336) was summoned to Parliament by writ, and is thereby held to have become Baron Camoys of the first creation. Ralph de Camoys (d.1336) married firs ...

. The current Lord Camoys is William Stonor.

Setting

The house nestles in the

. Behind the main house, there is a

walled garden A walled garden is a garden enclosed by high walls, especially when this is done for horticultural rather than security purposes, although originally all gardens may have been enclosed for protection from animal or human intruders. In temperate ...

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 drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

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

fallow deer ''Dama'' is a genus of deer in the subfamily Cervinae, commonly referred to as fallow deer. Name The name fallow is derived from the deer's pale brown colour. The Latin word ''dāma'' or ''damma'', used for roe deer, gazelles, and antelopes ...

. 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 1280, when Sir Richard Stonor (1250–1314) married his second wife, Margaret Harnhull. 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 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 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 ele ...

at their private chapel. 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 of the Midland District The Apostolic Vicariate of the Midland District (later of the Central District) was an ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. It was led by an apostolic vicar (or vicar apostolic) who was a titular bishop. Th ...

, 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 largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

throughout the reformation led to their marginalization 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 silicified sandstone blocks found in quantity in Southern England on Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire; in Kent; and in smaller quantities in Berkshire, Essex, Oxfordshire, Dorset, and Hampshire. Geo ...

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 location for a number of film and television productions, including ''

The Pumaman ''The Pumaman'' ( it, L'uomo puma) is a 1980 Italian superhero film co-written and directed by Alberto De Martino, starring Walter George Alton as the title character and Donald Pleasence as the villain. It was featured in a 1998 episode of ''Mys ...

'' (1980) and the

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors hav ...

film ''

The Living Daylights ''The Living Daylights'' is a 1987 spy film, the fifteenth entry in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and the first of two to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by John Glen, the film's ...

'' (1987). In 1989, it was used as the home of millionaire Victor Hazell (played by

Robbie Coltrane Anthony Robert McMillan (30 March 195014 October 2022), known professionally as Robbie Coltrane, was a Scottish actor and comedian. He gained worldwide recognition in the 2000s for playing Rubeus Hagrid in the ''Harry Potter'' film series. H ...

) in the film version of the

Roald Dahl Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Dahl has be ...

book ''

Danny, the Champion of the World ''Danny, the Champion of the World'', or simply Danny, is a 1975 children's book by Roald Dahl. The plot centres on Danny, a young English boy, and his father, William. They live in a Gypsy caravan, fix cars for a living in their mechanic sh ...

''. In 2000, the final scene of the last episode of One Foot In the Grave featured a fly over of the park and house. In 2019, Stonor appeared in Episode 3, Series 6 of BBC's detective series '' Endeavour'', entitled "Confection". The BBC/ FX ''

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. ''A Christmas ...

'', made by the team behind ''

Peaky Blinders The Peaky Blinders were a street gang based in Birmingham, England, which operated from the 1880s until the 1910s. The group consisted largely of young criminals from lower- to middle-class backgrounds. They engaged in robbery, violence, racke ...

'' and starring

Guy Pearce Guy Edward Pearce (born 5 October 1967) is an Australian actor. Born in Ely, Cambridgeshire in England, and raised in Geelong, Victoria in Australia, he started his career portraying Mike Young in the Australian television series ''Neighbours ...

and

Andy Serkis Andrew Clement Serkis (born 20 April 1964) is an English actor, director, and producer. He is best known for his performance capture roles comprising motion capture acting, animation, and voice work for computer-generated characters such as Go ...

, was partly filmed at Stonor in 2019. It also appeared as the venue of a two part episode of

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, ...

’s ''

Antiques Roadshow ''Antiques Roadshow'' is a British television programme broadcast by the BBC in which antiques appraisers travel to various regions of the United Kingdom (and occasionally in other countries) to appraise antiques brought in by local people ( ...

'' in February 2021, filmed in 2020.

Bibliography

* *

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