West Oxfordshire’s Jacobean Gems

Enjoy exclusive tours of two undiscovered Jacobean houses tucked away in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds.

Grade I Chastleton House, built of Cotswold stone between 1607 and 1612, possibly by Robert Smythson for Walter Jones, was owned by the same family for 400 years until its acquisition by the National Trust in 1991. The house is unaltered from when it was acquired with a very large number of rooms on display. Our pre-public exclusive tour will include the 72-foot Long Gallery with its barrel vaulted ceiling and the impressive Great Chamber, designed for the entertainment of important guests and for the playing of music, with a design scheme with its roots in the Italian Renaissance. The setting out of the panelling shows some inspiration from the classical, as do the painted roundels around the frieze, depicting the twelve prophets of the Old Testament and the twelve Sibyls or Prophetesses of Antiquity. Also in the Great Chamber are a set of Jacobite Fiat glasses engraved with the Jacobite emblems of roses, oak leaves, and a compass rose, which betray the family's 18th-century sympathies. Other items of interest in the house include the Juxon Bible, which is said to have been used by the chaplain, William Juxon, at the execution of Charles I. William Juxon had been Bishop of London and became Archbishop of Canterbury after the Restoration. 

Chastleton House image © DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0 <;, via Wikimedia Commons

Later, visit Grade II* Jacobean Cornwell Manor dating from the 16th century and built on the proceeds of the lucrative Cotswold wool trade. It contains a dining room and library panelled in about 1640 and a 17th-century dovecote and stables. It was the home of Sir Thomas Penyston, 1st Baronet and his family occupied the house until the 19th century. A new Georgian front was built in about 1750 to gentrify the house and the drawing room has a fireplace in the style of Robert Adam. In 1939 the architect Clough Williams-Ellis was hired by an American heiress, Mrs Anthony Gillson, who had bought the house before WWII. Williams- Ellis renovated the house, perfecting its Georgian façade, adding a ballroom and laying out the exquisite gardens.

Tickets £68 including a two-course hot lunch with tea and coffee at the Kings Head Inn. Lunch options to be made available to attendees in May.

N.B. Non-NT members will be required to pay an additional £12 for entry to Chastleton House.