Nuneham House

Nuneham House
Nuneham House from the River Thames

Nuneham House is a Palladian villa, at Nuneham Courtenay in Oxfordshire England. It was built for Simon Harcourt, 1st Earl Harcourt in 1756. It is owned by Oxford University and is currently used as a retreat centre by the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. It is a Grade II* listed building.

Lord Harcourt demolished the old village in the 1760s in order to create a landscaped park around his new villa. He removed the village in its entirety, and recreated it along the main Oxford road (now the A4074). The house was built in 1757 by Stiff Leadbetter for the 1st Earl Harcourt, with the interior by James Stuart. Lancelot "Capability" Brown designed the landscaped grounds.

In the 1760s Oliver Goldsmith witnessed the demolition of an ancient village and destruction of its farms to clear land to become a wealthy man's garden.[1] His poem The Deserted Village, published in 1770, expresses a fear that the destruction of villages and the conversion of land from productive agriculture to ornamental landscape gardens would ruin the peasantry.[1] The Deserted Village gave the demolished village the pseudonym "Sweet Auburn", and Goldsmith did not disclose the real village tho which it refers. However, he did indicate it was about 50 miles (80 km) from London and it is widely believed to have been Nuneham Courtenay.[1]

View of Nuneham Courtenay from the Thames 1787 by J. M. W. Turner, painted when he was either 11 or 12.

The house was altered by Henry Holland in 1781-2, including the heightening of the wings. In 1789 the 2nd Earl Harcourt re-erected the Carfax Conduit building in a prominent position in the park. It had had to be moved from Carfax in the centre of Oxford, where it was an obstacle to traffic.[2]

In 1904, after the death of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, Nuneham House was passed to his son, Lewis Vernon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt, known by many as "Loulou". He had just married Mary Ethel Burns, who was a niece of American financier and banker, J. P. Morgan. The estate inherited by the young couple was in need of major renovations, which they could not afford. For his niece, Morgan established a £52,000 ($260,000) line of credit at his London bank, which he told her did not need to be repaid. The Harcourts used these funds to renovate the old buildings and grounds.[3]

During World War II, Nuneham House and the park around it was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence and became RAF Nuneham Park. It was a P.R.I.U. or photographic reconnaissance interpretation unit. Examining the photographs taken by aircraft from RAF Benson and other airfields over enemy territory, were not only RAF officers but also small contingents from the Army, Royal Navy and the USAAF. Nissen huts and other, larger, buildings were erected adjacent to the mansion, including a camp cinema which villagers were welcome to attend. The RAF station continued after the war in the same role until the mid 1950s, when the added buildings and roadways were demolished and the estate handed back to the Harcourt family, who sold it to Oxford University.

The Harcourt Arboretum, part of the tree and plant collection of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, occupies part of what were the grounds of Nuneham House.

References

  1. ^ a b c Rowley, 1978, page 132
  2. ^ Follies and Monuments website
  3. ^ Strouse, Jean. Morgan: American Financier. Random House, 1999. pp. 384-386. ISBN 978-0679462750

Sources

External links

Coordinates: 51°40′41″N 1°13′13″W / 51.67818°N 1.22041°W / 51.67818; -1.22041


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Nuneham Courtenay — Coordinates: 51°41′20″N 1°12′04″W / 51.689°N 1.201°W / 51.689; 01.201 …   Wikipedia

  • House of Harcourt — Shield of the House of Harcourt – Gules, with two fesses or. The House of Harcourt is a Norman family, descended from the Viking Bernard the Dane and named after its seigneurie of Harcourt in Normandy. Its mottos were Gesta verbis praeveniant… …   Wikipedia

  • Old All Saints Church, Nuneham Courtenay — Old All Saints Church, Nuneham Courtenay …   Wikipedia

  • Old All Saints Church (Nuneham Courtenay) — Old All Saints Church, Nuneham 51.6805 1.2182 Koordinaten …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Stiff Leadbetter — (c.1705–18 August 1766) was a British architect and builder, one of the most successful architect–builders of the 1750s and 1760s, working for many leading aristocratic families.cite book |title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; entry for… …   Wikipedia

  • Abingdon Lock — Infobox Waterlock lock name = Abingdon Lock [ [http://www.visitthames.co.uk/uploads/a users guide to the River thames.pdf Statistics from Environment Agency A User s Guide to the River Thames:Part II ] ] caption= Abingdon Lock with Abingdon… …   Wikipedia

  • List of fictional Oxford colleges — Not to be confused with Oxbridge colleges. Fictional colleges are perennially popular in modern novels, allowing the author much greater license when describing the more intimate activities of an Oxford college. Such institutions are often home… …   Wikipedia

  • Oliver Goldsmith — This article is about the 18th Century Anglo Irish poet, author and physician. For the Canadian poet of the 19th Century, see Oliver Goldsmith (Canadian poet). For other people named Goldsmith, see Goldsmith (disambiguation). Oliver Goldsmith… …   Wikipedia

  • Simon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt — Simon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt, PC (c. 1661 ndash; July 23, 1727), Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, only son of Sir Philip Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, by his first wife, Anne, daughter of Sir William Waller, was born about… …   Wikipedia

  • Viscount Harcourt — The title Viscount Harcourt has been created twice, once in the Peerage of Great Britain and once in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was first created in Great Britain in 1711 for Simon Harcourt, Lord Chancellor. The third viscount was… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”