(598) Norreys and Bertie of Rycote and Wytham Abbey, Barons Norreys and Earls of Abingdon - part 1

Bertie, Earls of Abingdon 

Unusually, in this post I consider two families who were successive owners of the same estates and country houses, and who were united through marriage. The story begins in the 16th century with the Norreys family (the name is often spelled Norris, but the form Norreys is preferred in this account as it is the form now used by the family), who died out in the male line in the early 17th century. Their estates and their peerage passed in two successive generations through the female line, coming in 1645 to Bridget Wray, Baroness Norreys, who married, as her second husband, Montagu Bertie (c.1608-66), 2nd Earl of Lindsey. Their eldest son, James Bertie (1653-99), succeeded his mother as 5th Baron Norreys in 1657, and in 1682 was made Earl of Abingdon.  His descendants waxed and waned in prosperity, but held the family estates until the early 20th century, when the failure of the long-lived 7th Earl to limit his expenditure or manage his debt led to the gradual sale of all the remaining properties. The post has been divided into two parts, with this introduction and the description of the family's houses in part 1, and the genealogical account of the family in part 2.

The origin myth of the Norreys family is that they descend from from Ivo 'le Norreys' - the Norseman - a messenger from the King of Norway at the Court of King Henry I in the early 12th century. The first historical references to the family connect them with Lancashire and Berkshire. The Lancashire branch (who will be the subject of a future post), first recorded in the later 13th century, came in 1396 into the ownership of Speke Hall, and retained it until the early 18th century, when their male line died out and the property passed to the Beauclerks. However another branch had long roots in Berkshire, where the first who can be identified is Richard le Norreys, chief cook to Queen Eleanor of Castile, who rewarded him with the gift of the manor of Ockwells at Maidenhead in 1283. In the mid 15th century, they built the very splendid timber-framed Ockwells Manor, which I have described in a previous post. By then, they were amongst the leading gentry families in Berkshire, and Sir William Norreys (1433-1507) fought for Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field and commanded the king's army at the Battle of Stoke two years' later. That was perhaps the high point of the family's influence. Sir William was succeeded by his grandson, Sir John Norreys (d. 1563), who was convicted of murdering John Enhold of Nettlebed (Oxon) in 1517. He escaped with his life after his brother Henry secured a pardon from the king, but he forfeited Ockwells and paid a large fine instead. Any royal displeasure was very short-lived, however, for just three years later, in 1520, he entertained King Henry VIII at his house at Yattendon (Berks). His brother Henry was a great friend of the king, and also a supporter of Queen Anne Boleyn, but when she fell out of favour charges of adultery were fabricated against her and several courtiers, including Norreys, and after a show trial he was executed on Tower Hill in 1536 and posthumously attainted, meaning his lands were forfeited to the Crown.

At his death, Norreys left a young son and heir, Henry Norreys (c.1525-1601), who, as he grew to manhood, was quickly restored to some of his father's estates and established a position at court. His career prospered particularly after Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne, apparently because she honoured his father's defence of her mother, Anne Boleyn, but also because his wife became a close friend of the queen.

Beckley Park: rear elevation. Image: Vivian Garrido. Some rights reserved.

She was the daughter and heiress of Sir John Williams, 1st Baron Williams of Thame, on whose death in 1559 the couple succeeded to his estates at Rycote and  Wytham, and to his hunting lodge at Beckley Park. Beckley, which was built at much the same time as, and in association with, Williams' house at Rycote, c.1540, is a moated building of diapered red brick, with a relatively plain entrance front but a striking rear elevation with three tower-like projections that emphasise the verticality of the house.

The inheritance of the Williams estates in 1559, of Yattendon from his uncle, Sir John Norreys, in 1563, and of Weston Manor in about 1588, after the death of Lord Williams' widow, made Norreys an important local figure in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and he further cemented his position by the purchase of Cumnor Place (where the Earl of Leicester's wife had recently fallen downstairs to her death in suspicious circumstances, conveniently leaving the earl free to pursue his romantic relationship with the queen) in 1574. By then he had been raised to the peerage as Baron Norreys of Rycote, a peerage which was created by writ of summons (allowing its descent to heirs general, not just heirs male) and which remains a subsidiary title of his descendants. Lord Norreys and his wife produced six sons and one daughter. His sons all pursued military careers, fighting on the continent and in Ireland, and his second son, Sir John Norreys, has been called 'the Drake of the army' for his pre-eminence among Elizabeth soldiers, although his reputation is marred today by his reputed responsibility for a massacre of women and children on Rathlin Island in 1575. Ultimately five of the six sons died while on campaign, either of wounds or fevers, and the Queen took pity on the family's losses and recalled the last surviving son, Sir Edward Norreys (c.1550-1603) from his dangerous post as Governor of Ostend to provide comfort to his ageing parents.

On the death of Lord Norreys in 1601, the peerage and estates passed to his grandson, Francis Norreys, who was the only son of Lord Norreys' eldest son, Sir William Norreys (c.1545-79). Francis' title to the estates was challenged by his uncle, Sir Edward Norreys, but the latter died in 1603 before the matter could be decided in the courts. Francis Norreys (1579-1622), 2nd Baron Norreys seems to have been a hot-tempered and quarrelsome young man, who separated from his wife after just seven years of marriage, and maintained a feud with Sir Peregrine Bertie (1585-1639), with whom he twice fought duels, leading the king to issue a proclamation against duelling. In 1618 he killed a servant in a drunken affray and was convicted of manslaughter. He was pardoned for this offence and eventually restored to royal favour, being promoted in the peerage to the Earldom of Berkshire (a peerage created by patent and limited to heirs male) in January 1620/1. Soon afterwards, however, he was jailed for an insult offered to Lord Scrope within the Palace of Westminster, and is said to have been so mortified that he committed suicide with a crossbow, making a bad end to an unedifying career.

The Earl's only legitimate child was his daughter Elizabeth (c.1600-45), who succeeded him as Baroness Norreys, but not in the earldom, as only the barony could descend in the female line. Francis did have an illegitimate son, who was not eligible to inherit either of the peerages, but who was left the Weston Manor estate, while the Earl's other property passed to his daughter, who had eloped with and married a fairly junior courtier, Edward Wray (1598-1658). They also had only one child; a daughter, Bridget Wray (1627-57), who at the age of eighteen succeeded her mother as Baroness Norreys. As a significant heiress with a title in her own right, she was a highly eligible woman, and within a few weeks of her mother's death had married the Hon. Edward Sackville, a younger son of the Earl of Dorset. Sackville was killed in or after the Battle of Kidlington in 1646, and Lady Norreys took, as her second husband, Montagu Bertie (c.1608-66), 2nd Earl of Lindsey, who had large estates in Lincolnshire: for his family see my previous post. Lord Lindsey already had five sons by his first wife, and it was the eldest of these who inherited his peerages and most of his lands at his death. However, he and Lady Norreys had a second family, and their eldest son, James Bertie (1653-99) succeeded his mother in 1657 as 5th Baron Norreys and came into the Rycote, Wytham and Cumnor estates. He came of age in 1674 and his appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire in the same year was a recognition of his importance as a landowner and consequently his influence in the county. The same factors may have underlain the king's decision to make him Earl of Abingdon in 1682, which is not otherwise explained. Politically, the 1st Earl moved into opposition to the pro-Catholic policies of James II, and helped bring William of Orange to England as a mediator between the king and his subjects; but he opposed William's decision to seize the throne, although he was evidently soon reconciled to William after the coronation.  The 1st Earl married twice, having six sons and three daughters by his first wife, who also brought him estates in Wiltshire. His eldest son, Montague Bertie (1673-1743), 2nd Earl of Abingdon, took the additional surname Venables on his first marriage to a Cheshire heiress, but failed to produce a surviving heir by either of his two wives. In 1736, he therefore settled his estates on his nephew Willoughby Bertie (1692-1760), the son of his younger brother, the Hon. James Bertie (1674-1735) of Stanwell (Middx).

Willoughby Bertie, who succeeded his uncle as 3rd Earl of Abingdon and owner of the Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire estates in 1743, cannot have expected to succeed, although it must have become increasingly likely as his uncle failed to produce an heir. He spent much of the 1720s travelling on the continent for health reasons, and in 1728 he married the pretty daughter of a Scottish Catholic innkeeper who ran a hotel in Florence, although the family subsequently went to considerable trouble to obscure her humble origins. From 1733, he rented part of Gainsborough Old Hall (Lincolnshire) as his home, and he may have chosen a residence in that part of the country in order to cultivate his connections with the Dukes of Ancaster (as the Earls of Lindsey had become). His succession to the Abingdon estates in 1743 inevitably refocused his attention on Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Gainsborough was given up, and he moved to Rycote. Unfortunately, just two years later, tragedy struck, for there was a major fire at Rycote which destroyed much of the house and caused the death of his eldest son and heir. For a time, Rycote was uninhabitable, and the family seem to have moved to Wytham, but Rycote was gradually reconstructed to a simplified and modernised design. By the 1760s, however, the 3rd Earl was in financial difficulties, and several Oxfordshire manors were sold to meet his debts.

The 4th Earl of Abingdon (seated) as a composer, by J.F. Rigaud.

At his death in 1760 he was succeeded by his second son, Willoughby Bertie (1740-99), 4th Earl of Abingdon, who came of age a year later and soon afterwards set off on the Grand Tour with his younger brother, Peregrine Bertie (1741-90). The 4th Earl was described by the French resident in Geneva as 'a very petulant young man', who had been taught nothing but hunting and music. Music indeed was his great passion, and he became a significant patron of Haydn and other composers and wrote music himself, which was well-regarded at the time and remains tuneful today. Unfortunately, acting as a patron proved to be rather expensive, and combined with commissioning Capability Brown to landscape the grounds at Rycote (at a cost of at least £3,000), a liking for foreign travel, and a tendency to wild behaviour and intemperance, he quickly diminished the estate which he had inherited. He sold parts of the Wiltshire and Berkshire estates in 1761-62, and most of the rest of the Wiltshire property in a series of sales after 1777. In 1790 he inherited the Weston Manor estate from his younger brother Peregrine, but he had only a life interest in it, as it was entailed on his younger sons.  Around 1779, he gave up Rycote House, and although the estate was not sold he stripped the furniture from the house and sold it at auction. The house itself seems to have stood empty and decaying for nearly thirty years.

When the 4th Earl died in 1799 he was insolvent. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Montagu Bertie (1784-1854), 5th Earl of Abingdon, whose efforts to recover the family fortunes led him to demolish Rycote House in 1807 and sell the last part of the family's Wiltshire estates. Some of the building materials from Rycote were reserved and reused in remodelling the house at Wytham (which was renamed Wytham Abbey) in the Gothic style, to the designs of Thomas Cundy. Cundy's work was widely regarded as not very satisfactory, and in the late 1820s the house was remodelled again, giving it much of its present appearance. By 1835, the financial position of the family had recovered sufficiently for the 5th Earl to purchase the manor of North Weston (Oxon): the first time the estates had expanded rather than contracted for a century or more.

Montagu Bertie (1808-84), 6th Earl of Abingdon belonged to a generation that approached the life of a gentleman with a much more serious spirit than their fathers and grandfathers. He became an officer in the Oxfordshire Yeomanry Cavalry and a long-serving MP in the reformed House of Commons, and after succeeding to the peerage replaced his father as Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire. He married the daughter of a fellow Oxfordshire MP and they had six sons and three daughters. Four of his younger sons had notable careers in public service: one as a diplomat (who was eventually made a peer as Viscount Bertie of Thame); two in the army; and one in the church. His eldest son and heir was Montagu Arthur Bertie (1836-1928), 7th Earl of Abingdon, who commanded the Royal Berkshire Militia after his father became Lord Lieutenant. In 1858 he married Caroline Towneley, a member of one of the leading Lancashire recusant families, and was himself received into the Roman Catholic church in the same year. They produced one surviving son and three daughters before Caroline died in 1873. The 7th Earl waited a decade before marrying again, and his second wife was more than thirty years his junior. She brought him two further sons and two daughters, the last of whom was born as late as 1901, when he was sixty-five. He had the misfortune to live in a period when the financial and social certainties which had sustained the privileged position of the aristocracy and gentry for centuries were rapidly breaking down, and he seems to have either failed to recognise the way the world was changing or to have been unable to adapt to it.

Oaken Holt, Cumnor, built in 1890.

At all events, his accumulating debts forced him to sell land, and prevented him investing in the estate in ways which might have increased the income it generated. In the late 19th century he sold plots on the Cumnor estate for the building of large detached houses for successful Oxford tradesmen and university leaders, and in the early 20th century he was obliged to sell the Rycote estate in 1911. Wytham Abbey was let during the First World War to Col. Raymond ffennell, who bought the freehold in 1919. After living for some years in the 19th century house at Cumnor Place, he spent his last years at Oaken Holt, one of the houses built on land he had formerly owned at Cumnor.

The heir apparent to the earldom was the only surviving son of the 7th Earl's first marriage, Montagu Charles Francis Bertie (1860-1919), Lord Norreys, who took the additional surname Towneley. He was an army officer who served in the Boer War but had retired well before the First World War, when he was employed as commandant of a Prisoner of War camp on the east coast. Some combination of the exposed situation of the camp, poor quality accommodation, and ill health among the prisoners caused him to contract an illness to which he succumbed in September 1919. On the death of the 7th Earl in 1928 the family honours therefore descended to Lord Norreys' son, Montagu Henry Edward Cecil Towneley-Bertie (1887-1963). After a short career in the army, he commenced training for the Roman Catholic priesthood before the First World War, but on the outbreak of the war he gave this up and returned to the army in 1915. He was wounded in 1918 and retired in 1919, but either because the war had profoundly affected his outlook on life or because the death of his father left him heir apparent to the elderly 7th Earl, he does not seem to have considered returning to a career in the church. Indeed, a few months after the death of his grandfather and his succession as 8th Earl of Abingdon in 1928, he renounced his Catholicism and married a divorcee. He and his wife lived in London but had no children. In 1938 he also succeeded his distant kinsman, Montagu Peregrine Albemarle Bertie (1861-1938) as 13th Earl of Lindsey, uniting the branches of the family descended from the first and second wives of the 2nd Earl of Lindsey in the mid 17th century.

When the 13th and 8th Earl died in 1963, both earldoms (and the barony of Norreys) passed to his half-first cousin, Richard Henry Rupert Bertie (b. 1931), the present 14th Earl of Lindsey and 9th Earl of Abingdon. For nearly forty years he was a Lloyds underwriter and City businessman, but on his retirement he moved to Gilmilnscroft House at Sorn (Ayrshire), a home of his wife's family, which was sold in 2011. His son and heir apparent, the present Lord Norreys, still lives on the Gilmilnscroft estate.

Rycote House, Oxfordshire

There was a medieval house on this site, of which the freestanding chapel survives. The chapel was built for Richard and Sybil Quatremain, and consecrated in 1449, and the structure has been very little altered since. It is very like a small parish church, and consists of a battlemented west tower, nave and chancel, which were all originally rendered. The main doorway was on the north side, facing the house, and has an arch with quatrefoils in the spandrels and a hood with shields. 

Rycote House chapel from the south. Image: Howard Stanbury. Some rights reserved.

Rycote House chapel: interior looking east. Image: Peter Reed. Some rights reserved.

Inside, the pointed wagon roof survives intact, with traces of later, early 17th century, decoration. Much remains of the original furnishings, including the lower part of the rood screen, many of the pews in the western part of the nave, the stalls in the chancel, with poppyheads and traceried fronts, and the font cover.  There was, however, a significant internal refit in the early 17th century, when the two great pews flanking the steps to the chancel were introduced. That on the north, the Norreys family pew, is a two-decker affair, with a musicians' gallery over the pew, while that on the south (which may have been constructed for Charles I's visit to Rycote in 1625) has a great ogee canopy with crocketed ribs, originally surmounted by a carved Virgin and Child, and figures of the four Evangelists at the corners (two of which remain). Also of the 17th century are the dado in the chancel, the unusual square Jacobean canopied pulpit, the west gallery of c.1610, and the communion table. Later additions include the reredos and communion rails, of c.1682, and an 18th century reading desk. The chapel was conservatively restored by William Weir, c.1912, alongside the remodelling of the house, and again in 2013-17 by Donald Insall Associates. It is now regularly open to the public on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons (as of 2025).

Rycote House: drawing from the south-west by Henry Winstanley, c.1695. Image: Bodleian Library.

Rycote House: engraving by John Kip, c.1710.

The size and quality of the chapel makes it likely the medieval house was equally impressive, and a Time Team excavation in 2001 found some foundations and building materials, including carved capitals, but nothing much can be said about its appearance or layout except that it occupied a moated site. The first house of which much is known was a mid-16th century mansion, almost certainly built in the 1540s or 1550s for Sir John Williams, later Lord Williams of Thame, and constructed within the moated site of its predecessor. Views by Winstanley, of c.1695, and Kip, of 1707, show that it was an unusually large building for its time, arranged around two main courtyards, with extensive outbuildings to the west. In the 1660s, it was assessed on 41 hearths, making it one of the largest houses in the county. The south-west facing entrance front was elaborately composed, with octagonal corner towers rising to ogee cupolas, a central gatehouse flanked by half-octagonal buttresses, an oriel window over the front door, and two-storey bay windows on the end bays, under crowstepped gables. The central entrance led into a great hall. 

Rycote House: engraving of the south-west front as rebuilt after the fire of 1745. The chapel is on the right.

Rycote House: watercolour of the house from the north-east in about 1750 by J.B. Malchair of Oxford. Image: Bodleian Library.

Unfortunately, although we have several visual records of this house, it was largely destroyed by a fire in 1745 in which the heir to the estate was killed. Rycote was at least partially rebuilt in a simplified form, with some £5,000 being spent on ''amending, improving, and furnishing' the mansion between 1747 and the later 1760s. However, a financial crisis in the late 18th century and early 19th century led to the house being stripped of its furniture (sold at auction in 1779), and then being dismantled and sold for the building materials in 1807. All that remains are the lower stages of the south-west corner tower and some of the walling adjacent to it. This is built of diapered red brick, similar to the materials used by Sir John Williams in building his surviving hunting lodge at Beckley Park (Oxon). This corner of the house evidently had some post-demolition use, for a lugged stone doorway was inserted into the old work after 1822, apparently reusing a late 17th century window.

Rycote House: the surviving fragment of the house and the stables and outbuildings at the time of the estate sale in 1911.

Rycote House: a view of the remodelled house c.1928, from a broadly similar angle to the 1911 view above. Image: Country Life.

The stables and service ranges of the 16th century house were excluded from the demolition sale of 1807 and became a tenanted farmhouse for a century or more. In 1911, the Bertie family sold the estate, and the 16th century buildings were restored and remodelled by William Weir and George Jack for Alfred Hamersley c.1912. They inserted the straight-headed mullioned windows on the first floor of the former stable range, added a canted bay and gable, and inserted a fine Elizabethan-style fireplace in what was then the entrance hall. Weir's canted bay was removed in 1938 when H.R. Goodhart-Rendel remodelled the house for Cecil Michaelis. The present gable and battlements, and a two-bay extension containing a barrel-vaulted dining room with plasterwork in early 17th century style, were designed by Nicholas Thompson of Donald Insall Associates for Bernard and Sarah Taylor in 2001-05. Behind and parallel to this range is a section built of rubble stone and red brick by Goodhart-Rendel, which links the former stable block to the stone courtyard ranges. The south end of the west side of the courtyard including the carriageway entrance, and the balustraded central water feature are part of the work of 2001-05. 

Rycote House: the south-east front of the house today.

Sir John Williams had licence to create a park in 1539, so the original setting was presumably created alongside the building of the Tudor house. Today, however, the appearance of the park is largely due to Capability Brown, who was paid nearly £3,000 for landscaping work in the late 1770s. The Time Team excavation in 2001 showed that he drained the moat and created the lake, which was dredged and restored in 2001-05. He may also have made the ice house, originally buried under a mound but now sheltered by a brick and thatch structure, designed by Francis Maude of Donald Insall Associates and built in 2014-16. The formal gardens on both sides of the house were laid out to the designs of Elizabeth Banks before 2009.

Descent: Richard Fowler (d. 1502); to son, Richard Fowler who sold the reversion to Sir John Heron (d. 1522); to son, Giles Heron, who sold 1539 to Sir John Williams (d. 1559), 1st Baron Williams of Thame; to daughter, Margery (d. 1599), wife of Henry Norreys (c.1525-1601), 1st Baron Norreys of Rycote; to grandson, Francis Norreys (1579-1622), 2nd Baron Norreys and 1st Earl of Berkshire; to daughter, Elizabeth, Baroness Norreys (c.1600-45), wife of Edward Wray; to daughter Bridget (1627-57), Baroness Norreys, wife of the Hon. Edward Sackville (d. 1646) and later of Montagu Bertie (c.1608-66), 2nd Earl of Lindsey; to son, James Bertie (1653-99), 5th Baron Norreys and 1st Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montagu Bertie (later Venables-Bertie) (1673-1743), 2nd Earl of Abingdon; to nephew, Willoughby Bertie (1692-1760), 3rd Earl of Abingdon; to son, Willoughby Bertie (1740-99), 4th Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montagu Bertie (1784-1854), 5th Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montagu Bertie (1808-84), 6th Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montague Arthur Bertie (1836-1928), 7th Earl of Abingdon, who sold 1911 to Alfred St. George Hamersley (d. 1929); sold 1935 to Cecil Michaelis (d. 1997); sold after his death in 2000 to Bernard & Sarah Taylor.

Wytham Abbey, Berkshire

The house is essentially a late 15th century mansion built around two small courtyards for Sir Richard Harcourt (d. 1486), but it was much altered in the Tudor style in two campaigns in the early 19th century, when the south court was roofed over. There was never an abbey on the site, and the present name is a romantic coinage of the same period; it was formerly known as Wytham House. 

Wytham Abbey: a modern aerial view of the house from the east. Image: Dave Price. Some rights reserved.

The three-storey gate tower on the east-facing entrance front is the least-altered part of the medieval house. It is built of coursed limestone rubble, and has two embattled polygonal stair-turrets on the inner side. The turrets, which frankly look rather odd when seen rising behind the tower, originally faced into the courtyard that was roofed over in the 19th century. The doorway under the tower has a straight-sided pointed arch and continuous mouldings in a manner familiar from several Oxford college gate towers, but the angle buttresses to either side and the rather curious oriel windows on the upper floor seem to be early 19th century, as they do not appear on the earliest views of the house. The original layout of the house does not seem to have been recorded in any detail, but the hall lay on the west side of the south court, while north court was surrounded by service buildings. The work of different dates is unified by the mellow roofs of Stonesfield stone slates.

Wytham Abbey: the earliest known view of the house, late 17th century. Image: Bodleian Library.

Wytham Abbey: detail of Kip's engraving of the house from 1707.

In 1807, the 5th Earl of Abingdon decided to make Wytham his principal seat and pulled down most of the family's former residence at Rycote. He reserved some of the building materials from Rycote for re-use at Wytham, and in 1809-10 he employed Thomas Cundy to reface the west, south and east fronts of the house in a castellated style, and to roof over the main courtyard to form a new principal staircase. 

Wytham Abbey: sketch ground plan of Thomas Cundy's alterations of 1809-10, made by his son about ten years later. Image: RIBA.

Wytham Abbey: the staircase c.1900, photographed by Henry Taunt. Image: Historic England.

Cundy completely altered the principal interiors, creating a new outer hall or vestibule with minimally Gothick detailing, leading into the staircase hall which rises the full height of the house to an oval lantern. The staircase itself rises in a single long flight against the west wall to a half-pace, from which a shorter flight across the hall leads to a gallery along the east wall. The staircase has a simple handrail with two turned balusters per step. The upper parts of the walls were formerly hung with large canvases of family portraits, recorded in Henry Taunt's photographs of the house. Beyond the staircase, Cundy remodelled the former hall as a new drawing room (later used as a dining room), which is now panelled in Tudor style. To the north of this, along the west front, was a library with a canted bay window, while to the south were a dining room (now drawing room) and breakfast room (now living room/kitchen), with an ante-room between them.

Wytham Abbey: modern sketched copy of a now lost drawing of the south front after Cundy's alterations of 1809-10. Image: Historic England.

A drawing formerly at Wytham but now known only in a mid 20th century hand-drawn copy, shows that Cundy added a battlemented canted bay window and octangular turrets with cross-loops to the angles of the south end of the east front and built a new flat south front to its west with a battlemented canted single-storey bay window in the centre and another octangular turret at the south-west corner. The tops of the walls were battlemented, and the windows were uniform sashes with applied cusping and Tudor-style hood moulds. The work was all rather thin in detailing, and evidently failed to give satisfaction, for less than twenty years later the exterior was remodelled again. 

Wytham Abbey: watercolour by Vice-Adm. Lord Mark Kerr showing work in progress on the further remodelling of the house, 1828.
Image: Private Collection.

A watercolour of 1828 by Vice-Adm. Lord Mark Kerr shows work in progress, and in 1829 Buckler drew a view showing the house in its present form, although work may have continued into the early 1830s. The architect, who is unknown but could have been Buckler himself, removed Cundy's turrets and bay windows, and built out a big new square-sided bay window from the room at the south-west corner.

Wytham Abbey: the east front c.1900, photographed by Henry Taunt. Image: Historic England.

Wytham Abbey: aerial view of the house from the west, 1953. Image: Historic England.

Wytham Abbey: the south front today, showing the loggia added c.1925. 

Later changes to the house have been modest. The 7th Earl sold Wytham to Col. & Mrs Raymond ffennell in 1919, and they added a round-arched loggia to the south front in c.1925. The ffennells were philanthropists, and devoted some 260 acres of the estate to a pioneering experiment in countryside education for town children in the 1930s. Col. ffennell bequeathed the house to the University of Oxford in 1943, and the Nuffield Trustees bought most of the estate, including the extensive Wytham Woods, which became a vigorously protected site for ecological and zoological study in the late 20th century. The house itself was divided into fourteen flats in the 1950s, but suffered from a lack of maintenance and was sold in poor repair by the University in 1991. The purchasers, both novelists, converted the house back into a single dwelling, but sold it a charity called the Effective Ventures Foundation in 2022. The charity, which appears to have intended to use it as a conference venue and apartments, put it on the market in 2024, and it was for sale at the time of writing.

Kip's view shows the house surrounded by a moat and formal gardens, with the entrance front approached through an outer court flanked by outbuildings with stepped gables, similar to the outbuildings at Rycote. The 5th Earl changed this setting, draining the moat, demolishing the southern set of outbuildings and replacing those on the north by the present coachhouse and stables, and he rebuilt the parish church in 1811-12, reusing some Gothic materials salvaged from the demolition of Cumnor Place (Berks).

Descent: sold 1459 to Sir William Harcourt (d. 1486), who built the house; to widow, Katherine for life and then to son, William Harcourt; to son, Francis Harcourt (d. 1535); to son, Robert Harcourt, who sold 1538 to Leonard Chamberlain, who sold the same year to Sir John Williams (d. 1559), later 1st Baron Williams of Thame; to daughter, Margery (d. 1599), wife of Henry Norreys (c.1525-1601), 1st Baron Norreys of Rycote; to son, Sir Edward Norreys, who exchanged it for other lands with his nephew, Francis Norreys (1579-1622), 5th Baron Norreys and 1st Earl of Berkshire; to daughter, Elizabeth (c.1600-45), Baroness Norreys, wife of Edward Wray; to daughter Bridget (1627-57), Baroness Norreys, who married the Hon. Edward Sackville (d. 1646) and later Montagu Bertie (c.1608-66), 2nd Earl of Lindsey; to son, James Bertie (1653-99), 5th Baron Norreys and 1st Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montagu Bertie (later Venables-Bertie) (d. 1743), 2nd Earl of Abingdon; to nephew, Willoughby Bertie (1692-1760), 3rd Earl of Abingdon; to son, Willoughby Bertie (1740-99), 4th Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montagu Bertie (1784-1854), 5th Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montagu Bertie (1808-84), 6th Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montague Arthur Bertie (1836-1928), 7th Earl of Abingdon, who sold 1919 to Col. & Mrs ffennell; bequeathed 1943 to University of Oxford, which sold 1991 to Michael Stewart and Martine Brant; sold 1992 to Effective Ventures Foundation; for sale, 2025.

Cumnor Place, Berkshire

The site of Cumnor Place, where Anthony Forster entertained Amy (Robsart), Lady Dudley, and where she met her end by falling down the stairs in mysterious circumstances, is immediately south of the churchyard. The building originally belonged to the monks of Abingdon, and was 'kept in the hands of the abbot in case of infirmity or plague in the town of Abingdon.' The last abbot had it as his residence after the surrender of the abbey, and during most of the 16th century it was used as a dwelling-house. The death of Lady Dudley, though a jury decided that it was not due to foul play on the part of her husband or of Anthony Forster, nevertheless gave the house a very uncomfortable atmosphere, and after it ceased to be the residence of the lords of the manor the ghost of the lady was said to haunt the place, and particularly the staircase where she met her death.  

Cumnor Place: engraving of the partly ruined house prior to demolition in 1810.

Cumnor Place was a quadrangular stone building with an outer courtyard on the north, entered from the road. The house was mainly 14th century, but was considerably altered for Lord Norreys after he purchased the estate in 1574. The gate of the courtyard was dated 1575, and what was probably its postern now forms the entrance to Wytham churchyard. The main building had a gate-house with a vaulted roof in the centre of the north side, and the upper floor of this range was occupied by a single apartment forming the 'Long Gallery.' At the north end was a chamber containing a window, which was reused after the house was demolished as the east window of the new church at Wytham. The west range was mainly taken up by the 14th-century great hall, 44 ft. by 22 ft., and having the screens passage at the north end. The windows from here were also removed to Wytham Church, and the 16th century entrance doorway is built into the porch there. The hall roof had large curved principals similar to those of The Abbey at Sutton Courtenay. The south range had at the east end a small chapel, 22 ft. by 15 ft., and the east range included an entrance from the churchyard. The base of the outer wall of this range is the only part of the structure now standing. It forms the boundary of the churchyard, and contains a fireplace with a stone head, ornamented with a series of sunk quatrefoils. Traces of the terraces and gardens of the house are still visible to the west of the site on LIDAR surveys and to some extent on the ground. 

Already in 1658 Anthony Wood described Cumnor Place as "the ruins of a manor house", and Thomas Hearne in 1717 said the west end of the south wing was in ruins; a good part of the Place was still standing "but much altered, especially the north part of it which was adorned about a year since by Mr Knapp Gent who now lives in the house". Tighe, writing in 1821, says that the Place "having long been untenanted, was repaired about a century ago" for a farmer and his family. This tallies with an indenture of 1727 which tells us that in 1699 Lord Abingdon rented Cumnor Place and the Rectory to John Knapp, gentleman, of Woolly Farm, Chaddleworth (Berks). In 1713 the manor passed to his son on his marriage; but part of the house was reserved for John Knapp the elder to live in. He died later in the year, but his son's right to go on living there was confirmed in 1727. A survey of the Abingdon estate in 1728 shows that Cumnor Place was still much the biggest house in the village.

In 1759 Buckler said the Place was in a ruinous condition with one corner only inhabited; the Hall was used as a granary and its painted windows had been vandalised. But it still seems to have been a going concern as a farm. In 1770 it was sub-let by Dudson Rawlins of Abingdon, presumably a tenant of the Earl, to John King of Cumnor, a yeoman farmer. He was to have the "mansion house … and farm with the Malthouse, Barns and Stables, Dovehouse, orchard and garden" for 14 years. How far these farm buildings were original, purpose-built ones or adapted from parts of the main building is not clear. Bartlett says the west end of the south wing became a malthouse; and the chapel, with its paving and seating removed, a cow house. King also rented some land, including the fishponds associated with the house. Rawlins would keep the buildings, gates and walls in repair, but John King was to keep the glass windows in repair and to keep the pigeon house and fishponds stocked. The Gentleman's Magazine says that the farmer at some stage left and the building "was parcelled out in small tenements and let by the lessee at Abingdon to the poorer classes". William Stone owned all the 25 acres around Cumnor Place in 1808. When the lease expired around 1810 Lord Abingdon decided to take down the ruinous building, and the material was used for the rebuilding of Wytham Church. 

Cumnor Place: the present house of that name, which is largely late 19th and 20th century in date

Cumnor Place: the garden front of the present house of that name.

The house now known as Cumnor Place, south-east of the church, incorporates an old building, perhaps originally of 17th-century date, but was much altered and extended in the 19th century and c.1909-11. It was used by the 7th Earl of Abingdon as an occasional residence in the early 20th century. It was bought in 1967 by the art historian, Dr Oliver Impey, and his wife and further restored and modernised.

Descent: Abingdon Abbey to dissolution of the monastery; seized by Crown and leased to last abbot of Abingdon (d. by 1541); sold 1547 to George Owen (d. 1558); to son, William Owen, who leased it to Anthony Forster (d. 1572) (tenant at the time when Lady Dudley fell down the stairs in 1560), who bought the freehold in 1561; bequeathed to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who sold 1574 to Henry Norreys (c.1525-1601), 1st Baron Norreys of Rycote; to son, Sir Edward Norreys, who exchanged it for other lands with his nephew, Francis Norreys (1579-1622), 5th Baron Norreys and 1st Earl of Berkshire; to daughter, Elizabeth (c.1600-45), Baroness Norreys, wife of Edward Wray; to daughter Bridget (1627-57), Baroness Norreys, who married the Hon. Edward Sackville (d. 1646) and later Montagu Bertie (c.1608-66), 2nd Earl of Lindsey; to son, James Bertie (1653-99), 5th Baron Norreys and 1st Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montagu Bertie (later Venables-Bertie) (d. 1743), 2nd Earl of Abingdon; to nephew, Willoughby Bertie (1692-1760), 3rd Earl of Abingdon; to son, Willoughby Bertie (1740-99), 4th Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montagu Bertie (1784-1854), 5th Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montagu Bertie (1808-84), 6th Earl of Abingdon; to son, Montague Arthur Bertie (1836-1928), 7th Earl of Abingdon, who was occasionally resident in the new house; sold 1909 to Amy & Katherine Jervoise... sold 1967 to Oliver Impey (1936-2005) and his wife Professor Jane Mellanby (1938-2021); sold 2022. 

Weston Manor, Weston-on-the-Green, Oxfordshire

The house has a long and complex history, made more confusing by the importation on several occasions of genuine historic features from other places. In essence, this was the site of a moated medieval manor house belonging to Oseney Abbey, which was largely rebuilt, around a courtyard, after 1540 for Sir John Williams (d. 1559), 1st Baron Williams of Thame.  The house was considerably altered in the 18th century and then refronted c.1825, while further significant changes were made in the 1850s. It has been an hotel since 1949.

Weston Manor: the house as depicted on the 1st edn 25" map of 1875, showing the medieval moat. 

The medieval manor house was the home of Oseney Abbey's bailiff for the bailiwick of Weston. Two sides of its 13th-century rectangular moat were existing, and a third side could be traced, until 1908, when they were largely filled in; they are visible on the 1st edition 25" map above. The principal survival of the medieval house is the structure of the early 16th century great hall, although the visible features are almost all later additions. A staircase turret was added on its south side in the late 16th or early 17th century to provide access to a gallery at its east end, which may have been adapted from the earlier solar. Inside, the hall has oak linenfold panelling and above that a fine carved frieze of c.1520, showing some classical influence, and a Latin inscription which can be translated as "Fear God and depart from evil. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom", with the name of Richard Rydge, the last Abbot of Notley (Bucks.), between the two sentences. Peregrine Bertie (1741–90) moved this panelling from Notley to Weston in about 1780, and it resembles contemporary work at Thame Park. The five bay timber roof with arch-braced collars and curved windbraces also came from Notley, but was only moved here and rested on Victorian angel corbels in 1851 by the Rev. F.A. Bertie, after being used on a barn at Chesterton. 

Weston Manor: the south front, with the medieval hall on the left.

Weston Manor: the medieval hall, looking east towards the gallery. Image: Country Life.

As rebuilt in the 16th century, the house is roughly rectangular and encloses a courtyard. The family apartments lay in the south and east ranges; the service accommodation on the north and west. There are 16th century fireplaces in the entrance hall and the gallery of the medieval hall, but otherwise the internal details are all later. The stables and outbuildings stood detached from the house across a paved stable-yard, through which may once have lain the main approach. The house was assessed on 20 hearths in 1665, making it one of the county's larger mansions. 

Weston Manor: ground floor plan in 1928. Image: Country Life.

Weston Manor: engraving of the east front in 1823, from Dunkin's The history and antiquities of the hundreds of Bullington and Ploughley.

An engraving of about 1823 shows the east front before it was rebuilt in the 1820s, when it was of two storeys and essentially symmetrical in composition. There was a gable at either end with a blind window below. An unpretentious low wall or paling separated the house from the landscape beyond, and farm outhouses lay on both sides. The sash windows, two-storey canted bay windows, and central doorcase with a broken segmental pediment tell a story of extensive piecemeal alteration in the 18th century. Inside, the chief surviving features of interest are the the bolection-moulded panelling of c.1700 in the drawing room, with an acanthus frieze on top, the bow window of this room, and the early 18th century staircase, which divides into two flights near the top. The central courtyard has a central well surrounded by a low wall bearing the arms of the Bertie family, and against its west wall two doors from the Jacobean chapel of Exeter College. They bear the arms of George Hakewill, rector of the college, at whose cost the chapel had been built; and were probably brought here when the chapel was rebuilt in 1856.

Weston Manor: the east (entrance) front today.

In about 1825, the east front of the house was completely rebuilt to a more imposing design intended to make more explicit the Tudor origins of the house. The new front is of seven bays, and battlemented, with a thin three-storey entrance tower in the centre, and broader towers at each end, which are gabled on all four sides.  The fenestration is almost uniformly of two-light mullioned windows with arched heads, but these frame sliding sashes not casement windows, and the left-hand bay of the centre has single-light windows, presumably because of constraints imposed by the underlying Tudor fabric. 

The house passed out of the Bertie family in 1918, but remained in private ownership for another thirty years. It was photographed for Country Life magazine in 1928. Conversion to hotel use after the Second World War has inevitably meant compromises with the historic furnishing and use of the house, but the most significant change has been the rebuilding of the former stable block in Cotswold style in 1988 as a block of additional bedrooms, to the designs of Norman Machin & Associates of Bicester.

Descent: Oseney Abbey; seized by the Crown at the dissolution of the abbey in 1539, and granted 1540 to Sir John Williams (d. 1559), later 1st Baron Williams of Thame; to widow, Margery (d. c.1588), later wife of Sir William Drury (d. 1579) and James Croft, and after her death to Williams' son-in-law, Henry Norreys (c.1525-1601), 1st Baron Norreys, who let it to James Croft; to grandson, Francis Norreys (1579-1622), 2nd Baron Norreys and 1st Earl of Berkshire; to illegitimate son, Francis Rose (later Sir Francis Norreys, kt.) (d. 1669); to son, Sir Edward Norreys, kt. (1634-1713); to son-in-law, Hon. Henry Bertie (c.1656-1734); to grandson, Norreys Bertie (d. 1766); to great-nephew, Hon. Peregrine Bertie (1741-90); to brother, Willoughby Bertie (1740-99), 4th Earl of Abingdon; to younger son, Peregrine Arthur Bertie (1790-1849); to brother, Rev. Frederick Arthur Bertie (1793-1868); to widow, Georgina Bertie (d. 1881) for life and then to his son, Capt. Frederick Arthur Bertie (1837-85); to widow, Rose Emily Bertie, who sold 1918 to David Margesson (1890-1965), 1st Viscount Margesson; sold 1922 to Charles Beresford Fulke Greville (1871-1952), 3rd Baron Greville; sold 1934 to Stuart James Bevan (1872-1935); to widow, Clair Margeurite Bevan (1885-1984), who sold 1936 to Philip Lyle (1885-1955), who let it during the Second World War and sold 1946 for use as a country club; sold 1949 as an hotel.

Continue to part 2 of this post.

Principal sources

G. Tyack, S. Bradley & Sir N. Pevsner, The buildings of England: Berkshire, 2nd edn., 2010, pp. 739-41; S. Bradley, Sir N. Pevsner & J. Sherwood, The buildings of England: Oxfordshire - Oxford and the south-east, 2023, pp. 717-20;

https://users.ox.ac.uk/~djp/cumnor/articles/inman-robsart.htm.

Can you help?

• If anyone can offer further or more precise information or corrections to any part of this article I should be most grateful. I am always particularly pleased to hear from current owners or the descendants of families associated with a property who can supply information from their own research or personal knowledge for inclusion.

Revision and acknowledgements

This post was first published 30 March 2025. I am grateful to Lord Norreys for his assistance with this family.