Holton Park - A short history BY Kevin Heritage

A HISTORY OF HOLTON PARK - OXFORDSHIRE Better known today as the campus of Wheatley Park School, Holton Park has a dramatic history. It seems that a mound was created by ancient settlers on the high ground west of the current village, on the lower ridges of the Oxford Heights on the side of a gently sloping hill. It can be seen from Holton church, clearly rising towards the school along the line of the former private driveway from the Manor House to the church itself. The landscape suggests a hillside settlement, but in a contrived position. On part of the mound known as ‘the Dell’ a small flint tool was discovered by a school pupil at Wheatley Park during an archaeology club session in the 1980s. If this was the earliest settlement at Holton it had its own fresh water supply from the many springs in the area. These same springs provide for the millions of litres in the medieval moat, and allowed fresh water to be pumped to the Georgian house in the 19th century. During the second world war the American military hospital contaminated the water supply, although now it must be fairly fresh once more as the moat teams with sizeable fish. In the summer of 2011 when the water conduit outside the south-western corner of the moat was drained, it filled up again overnight!

SPEED MAP OF THE AREA 1611

Front cover. Top. Elisha Biscoe’s Georgian House c.1807. Picture 1890s - now Wheatley Park School Arts Centre Bottom. Holton House in 1803 prior to demolition. The watercolour by Dr William Crotch was generously donated to the Holton Archive by Mr Mark Hassell.

Acknowledgements: St Bartholomew’s Church, Holton - c1895. Norman foundations

Many thanks to Roberta Walton and Wheatley Park School’s Curriculum Services, for the production of this short history. Also to Nigel Phillips, John Fox and particularly to Marilyn Yurdan for their support during its research and production. Please visit our website at www.holtonparkarchive.com Copyright: Kevin Heritage - 2016

Roman and Saxon Holton After the Claudian invasion of Britain in AD 43 there was extensive Roman settlement around the Oxford area, including a villa on nearby Castle Hill, Wheatley, as well as the Roman road running through part of Holton Wood and on across Otmoor. Glass making in Cowley and the extraction of yellow and red ochre from Shotover were also profitable Roman industries. Frances Letitia Biscoe of Holton Park records in her diary of 1827 the discovery of 20-30 bodies, burial urns and several Roman coins found in the field known as ‘the Racks’, now the playing fields and tennis courts of Wheatley Sportsfield Trust. A burial urn was found at Holton Cottage in 1885 and keen eyed gardeners still unearth coins from the Bronze age to the 4th century AD, also a range of Roman coins and some Coin of the Emperor Claudius found on ‘The Racks’ pottery have recently been found in Halls Field. In 1906 parts of a Roman altar and shards of Roman pottery were also discovered supporting the idea of a Romano-British settlement in the vicinity of the village. The Saxon period provides less specific evidence of settlement. The name ‘Holton’, ‘Halton’ or ‘Eltone’ meant ‘hidden nook‘ or ‘settlement in a hollow’. The great Norman survey of 1086/87, the Domesday Book, recorded: ‘seventeen peasants cultivating ‘six ploughs’ (about 720 acres) and having use of three square furlongs of woodland, fifteen acres of meadow and twelve acres of pasture. Its value ‘is’ and ‘was’ £4’ meaning that it was very little affected by the Norman invasions and that the population settled quite quickly under Norman rule. It is very likely that any substantial defensive structures that there were around the original village in the area known as ‘Buryhook’ ( settlement in a hook of land), were not on the current Holton Park site. Late Saxon, or early Norman defences were of ditch and fence nature and the first Norman manor was probably at Church Farm, which we know was a moated site until very recently. More recent finds in Halls Field have produced a wide range of late Saxon and early Medieval pottery shards, supporting the idea of a Saxon settlement at Buryhook Corner. Another more tangible object that remains from this early period may be the ‘Domesday’ or ‘Breame’ Oak (Ann Breame was Elisha Biscoe’s grandmother and came from a family of timber merchants which maybe why the tree is called by her name.) At around nine hundred years old the tree is reputed to be one of the oldest oaks in the country and is 9.3 metres in girth. It was planted or seeded around the time of Domesday, thus its other name. It may also be from the Old English for ‘fine’ or ‘famous.’ In the NapoleonThe Breame Oak ic wars the tree was pollarded to provide timber for small oak objects on board ship, hence its characteristic shape. A magnificent painting of the oak tree, with the current house in the background now hangs in the home of a member of the Biscoe family in Kingston, Jamaica. The oak survived a lightening strike, possibly hundreds of years ago, and a fire in 1990.

The Medieval Manors Medieval Holton was a village of three manors, ‘Senleice’ (‘beautiful spot’) and ‘Grove’ (‘clear area between woodlands’) being the other two. Senleice may have been the Norman settlement around the Church, and Grove was much nearer the river, slightly further east and north of the Mill on the River Thame. (The then navigable River Thame was certainly part of the later estate and the crossing at ‘Wheatley Bridge’ was part of the crucial route from London to Oxford and the Western Marches along the Worcester Road through Islip). The ‘Victoria County History’ states that Grove’s position has not been identified, ‘but it seems to have been near the ‘Harpesford’ or Wheatley Bridge. It was also near the mill.’ Harpesford has nothing to do with the musical instrument, but is derived from the Old English ‘ford’ of the herepath, a route used for military or administration purposes. Another Saxon path is mentioned by Dr W.O. Hassell as coming through the parish near Polecat End. An older meaning of ‘grove’ is a pathway through trees, rather than just the trees themselves, which places the manor of Grove to the north-west of Wheatley Bridge, where it must have been easier to cross the Thame before the bridge was built. Satellite images show crop marks and buildings along a pathway leading to what appears to be pools, or a fishery, on the River Thame. The manor of Grove is not mentioned by name in Domesday Book, but may have been owned between 1121 and 1130 by Jocelin de Grave, who gave two-thirds of the tithes of his land in Grove to Abingdon Abbey. The fact that the manor of Grove consisted of a lot more than a strip of land along the riverbank is shown by entries in the cartularies of Abingdon Abbey which list the variety of produce sent off from the manor to the abbey to provide food for any monks who were in poor health. A charter of the late 12th century lists lambs, calves, piglets, wool, flax, hay and sheaves of corn, which proves that the manor had sufficiently varied types of land to produce these items. There are also references to eels and contributions from the de Grave fishery (the site of the current mill), which were sent off to Abingdon as well. A deed which dates from between 1234 and 1241, mentions various complaints and petitions flying back and forth between the Abbot of Abingdon and the Rector of Holton. The situation had become serious enough for the Pope to appoint judges to resolve a settlement, which, not surprisingly, went in favour of the abbey. Grove was obviously worth the cost of a lengthy and costly legal wrangle. The male line of the de Grave family seems to have died out by the 1280s and by the middle Aerial view of the site of Grove near to the river Thame between the A40 of the 14th century Grove was held by Robert and M40 today and Isabel Lelham. William and Cecily Lelham of Grove can be traced by a transfer of property in Oxford in 1390. By 1418, William Lelham was dead and in 1422 his son and heir, a goldsmith also named William Lelham, was leasing Grove, with 7½ acres in the fields of Holton, to Roger Perye of Wheatley for twelve years, with reversion to Richard and Maud Gelote. The Gelotes must have obtained possession of the manor as 80-yearold Maude Gelote, widow, brought a suit in Chancery to have the reversion settled on her daughter Joan. After this, says the Victoria County History, ‘the descent of the manor cannot be traced.’ In 1357 the records of the Earls of Cornwall show that the manor of Seinlice was passed by inheritance to the next generation. The later medieval Holton was probably clustered around St Bartholomew’s church and Buryhook. The church is almost certainly of late Saxon or early Norman foundation, but from the 1170s onwards it was dedicated to the saint, who was flayed alive. He was the patron saint of doctors in the early medieval period, thus St Barts. Hospital in London, but he was also adopted by tanners who flayed animals for their valuable hides. By the late 12 th century Holton was immediately adjacent to a ‘white deer park’ in the centre of a swathe of royal forests, Shotover to the west and Bernwood in the east. This substantial walled park, almost two miles in circumference, was said to

have been founded by Henry II, and would certainly fit into the predominant landscape management of the area. The wall to the deer park bisects the churchyard as well as the property known, since the 19 th century, as Church Farm. This farm though was once a moated site and very probably the first Norman ‘manor’ of Holton, which is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. Holton would have run in a north-easterly direction from the church and manor through the grounds of what is now Holton Place. This ridge of land looks down today towards the original Holton village, ‘the tun in the hollow.’ If there was an early deer park adjacent to the church it would have had some status as it was between the Royal Forests of Shotover and Bernwood. Looking at the history of the three manors it now seems unlikely that it was a walled park that early in its history. We know that Holton was in Royal hands by the late twelfth century as part of the ‘Honor of St. Walery’, and was owned by the Earls of Cornwall, the first Earl being Richard, brother of King Henry III, and entitled ‘King of The Romans.’ Being adjacent to royal hunting grounds still meant that the area around Holton could have been heavily involved in the industries associated with deer. Royal parks were extremely important status symbols and another means whereby the Norman/Angevin Royal Family and their followers could stamp their authority on the local population. Royal forests needed protection from poachers, safe breeding grounds for the valuable animals within, such as wild boars (as in the ‘Boar stall’ a few miles east of Holton), and the building and maintenance of hunting towers and lodges. The first building on the later moated island could still possibly have been such a tower or lodge. Another clue to the work that was part of the hunting economy of the area appears in the field name of ‘the Racks’ at the northern point of the walled park. ‘Racks’ was the name given to the antlers of the deer, and they were in themselves a valuable commodity being used for tools and weapons etc. The industry of the forests generated work for the local population in a variety of ways, therefore the local people, as well as tending to their own allotted strips of land for their subsistence, would also help farm the lord’s ‘demesne’. In an area of royal forests and parks there would probably be other substantial roles relating to the hunting economy. There is little evidence of this remaining today, but we can only assume that forest and land management was central to the area - certainly for about two hundred years - and that the carcasses of animals were dealt with in situ. A medieval rabbit warren still survives, surrounded by Holton Brook and the old structured pillow mounds are populated by seven hundred year old yew trees. The brook kept the rabbits in, and kept the cattle out. The site of probably the earliest structure within the walls of the park is situated in the grounds of Brookes University campus today. It is a simple ditched mound for a small structure which may have been a look out, or watch tower - possibly part of a series of beacon towers in the region before 1170 - or it may have been the site of the small Grove Manor. There is no stone structure left above ground level which also suggests that it was wooden, but a substantial stone pavement is obvious in the ditch surrounding it. Both oral history and the evidence of a moated island, led to suggestions in the past, that Holton Park was the site of a substantial castle. This is almost certainly not the case, as after the conquest this part of Oxfordshire and most of the rest of south central England, soon fell under Norman power. Substantial royal fortresses were built at nearby Oxford and Wallingford, and there would not have been the need for another one at Holton even though it commands a substantial vantage point looking south-east towards the Chilterns, and north-east towards the Brill Hills. Furthermore there is no archaeological or documentary evidence for a castle, but hunting lodges were traditionally built in castellated styles, as hunting was associated with warfare. The King John hunting

style of the architecture employed at Holton Park might be a clue as to its original use. The moat itself surrounds a large Island, which covers about an acre of land, similar to areas of other moated sites at Baddesley Clinton (Warwickshire) and Oxburgh Hall (Norfolk). Both of those still have substantial three or four sided medieval houses and perhaps give us a taster of what sort of medieval property stood originally on the Island. The southern side of the moat is much narrower than the northern. It is cut out of the local limestone rock which was very likely used to build whatever structure was first erected on the site. There are also substantial springs feeding the moat and maintaining its vast amount of water up to the present day, most of which drains from the nearby Shotover heights. What is not clear is when the moat was built in its walled and supported square shape but evidence points to this being late 15th century. The northern side of the moat is supported by a very substantial series of banks and walls, which if they were not there would simply allow the spring water to drain downhill towards the rear of the site of the church and its adjoining manor farm. From the flora of that area it is clear that these fields have been the site of marsh land in the past, and still are prone to flooding today during periods of heavy rain. The evidence for the ‘moating’ of the northern side of the Island was substantiated about 15 years ago when Moat Road had to be underpinned. In the north east corner of the moat an overflow sump passes under the road down into what is known locally as the ‘Dell’, where the famous ‘Domesday’ or ‘Breame’ oak stands at its eastern rim. The Oxford Archaeological Unit carbon dated the wood from the overflow drain to be 12th century when felled. Of course when it was put in place to be used as a continuous drainage channel it would have been treated for such a purpose, so we are probably looking at this sump being positioned there in the late 13th or early 14th century which fits in well with what we know was a substantial development of the Island site at around that time. The mid water wall structure that was seen by Frances Tyndale-Biscoe when the moat was dredged in 1899 was probably part of the substantial moat foundation that was on the northern side of the moat. The inside moat held waste from the house and the outside moat was for fish and plant life. The sluice drain at the north east corner of the moat would fit into the building of this structure. By 1303 Margaret de Clare, the Dowager Countess of Cornwall, widow of Edmund, claimed rents as a dower. It is possible that at this time the Island site was converted and extended into a manor house for the Countess and her retinue. It is likely that there was a substantial two wing, north and east, house built and the moat joined up to create a pleasing ‘aspect’ for the whole site. The first substantial manor on the site dates from this period and the only important archaeological find dated to this period has substantiated the ownership of Holton by the Earls of Cornwall. In 2007 part of a patterned medieval floor tile was discovered on land opposite the south– western corner of the moat. It is of red terracotta about two inches thick and is patterned with an inlay of cream china clay, or kaolin, which is found in substantial amounts to this day in the area around St Austell in Cornwall. We were able to compare this tile with others found at The Holton Tile c.1300 Berkhamsted Castle, the medieval seat of the Earls of Cornwall, and Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire. At Hailes the first Earl of Cornwall, Richard, King of the Romans, had a substantial nave built in which he housed half of the phial of Christ’s blood, supposedly taken from him on the cross. This very important medieval relic became the centre of a European place of pilgrimage, and the other half of the phial’s contents were housed in the Abbey of Ashridge adjacent to Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire. Conveniently almost exactly half way between the two sites lay Holton, also granted to the Earls, and the tile found here was made by their own tilers, who worked exclusively for the family on their great building projects for about seventy years. The ‘Holton Tile’ was very likely to have been situated on the floor of the chapel in the medieval house on the Island which was completely demolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Recently anoth-

er example of a painted tile was found in a midden (waste dump) adjacent to the moat. Although Piers Gaveston was created Earl of Cornwall and inherited the land, he married Edward II’s niece Margaret de Clare, whilst Margaret the Dowager Countess was still alive. It is unlikely that Gaveston disturbed her way of life before his execution in 1312. In 1317 one of Edward’s wards, Elizabeth de Burgh, was granted the manor on the death of Margaret when she married another of Edward’s favourites, Hugh D’Amory. Eventually the manor of Holton was sold to the Brome family who held Senlis ( Senleice), the neighbouring manor, which had previously belonged to the Earls of Cornwall. Already Lords of the Manor in 1446, the Bromes may have been resident in the moated house through the 15th century as part of a grant to Senlis manor. There are early Brome monuments in Holton Church the first being for William who died in 1461. Christopher Brome was baptised in Holton in 1475 and his descendants lived in the Manor House known as ‘Halleplace’. His grandson, Sir Christopher, succeeded to the estate in 1558. Recent evidence shows that Elizabeth I visited Holton Manor on four occasions Elizabeth I—The Ditchley Portrait, 1592. It during her summer progresses in 1572, 1574, 1579 and 1592. It was unusual shows the Queen standing on Oxfordshire for the Queen to visit such a small manor that many times and therefore suggests that she was either close to members of the family, or liked the hunting in the area.

Holton Park – ‘A Receptacle for Evil and Suspected Persons.’ The Whorwoods of Sandwell, Staffs. And Holton, Oxon by kind permission of John Fox

Lady Eleanor Windsor became Sir Christopher’s second wife and bore him two sons, George and William. William died aged 10 (his brass can be seen in Holton church dated 1599). They also had five daughters. Lady Eleanor was committed to the Tower of London in 1574 for ‘obstinacy against the state of religion established in this realm’ (she

Baddesley Clinton House, Warwickshire. Thought to be a sister house to the original Holton Park

attended the banned Catholic mass in London, probably at the so-called Savoy Chapel inside the Portuguese Embassy) and again to Westminster gatehouse in 1577 for ‘misdemeanours’ as a Catholic recusant. She had to be made an example of due to her social status. It cost Sir Christopher a bond of £300 to release his wife, with his guarantee of her good behaviour. She had other ideas and, soon after Sir Christopher’s death in 1589, she appeared before the Privy Council on charges of using ‘The Manor House of Holton as a receptacle for evil and suspected persons and seminary priests (Jesuit priests from the continent)... persons dangerous to the state’ (John Fox).

Religion and patriotism were finely enmeshed in the local district around Holton too, as the owners of Waterperry, Wheatley and Haseley Manors were also indicted on similar charges of treason or religious nonconformity. Much the same was happening at a string of recusant houses along the Worcester Road to the borders of Wales including at Baddesley Clinton, another Brome family link to the Ferrers family, and at Sandwell where the Bromes had married into the Whorwoods, the family that would soon inherit Holton Park. This was just after the attempted Spanish invasion by the Armada when feelings were running high on both sides. Strangely it was also the time that the Anglican rector of Holton, Bartholomew Price, lodged in Holton House itself. Lady Eleanor had in fact been reported by her own son George, who was clearly keen to show the authorities that he was on the right side of the law, despite his mother. In fact, it is reported that a family row broke out between mother and son in front of an embarrassed Privy Council, which was probably more about money than religion. Eventually a compromise was reached on the finances, but not before Lady Eleanor had spent nine months in the Tower of London. She died at Holton in 1592. This dispute had revealed that the Island House was ‘greatly decayed’ at that time and it may have been that, after the disputes with his mother, George was able to reface the old medieval manor with an Elizabethan mock gothic frontage, as seen in the 1787 print. The east side of the now half moated Island was the only inhabited building on the plot, and until fairly recently a large gargoyle–like head had survived the demolition of this frontage. It was confirmed by English Heritage in the early 1990s as most likely coming from the mock gothic façade of the late Elizabethan period.

Charles I by Anthony Van Dyck (National Gallery)

When George Brome died in 1613 Holton passed to his only surviving child, Ursula, wife of Sir Thomas Whorwood, who was at the time temporarily lodging on Wheatley High Street with widow (and relative by marriage) Elizabeth Horseman, née Brome; her mother-in-law was a Brome of Holton. Ursula and Thomas moved to Holton after George’s death.

The Whorwood Centuries 1613-1805 Sir Thomas Whorwood, husband of Ursula Brome, became ‘Lord of the Manors of Holton and Headington’ after winning his court case with the Exchequer to prove his validity to these titles which were inherited through Ursula. In 1615 their eldest son Brome was baptised at Cuddesdon not Holton, possibly because of the links between Ursula and the Archdales of Wheatley, whose parish church was Cuddesdon. Elisabeth was born in 1617, Thomas 1619 and William 1624. Sir Thomas was regarded as a difficult character and his tenants brought a collective action against him for breach of manorial rights during the latter part of the reign of James I. By 1634 he was being accused of arranging the murder of a business opponent and it was this situation that led him to Sir James Maxwell, Black Rod. Maxwell suggested a deal to Sir Thomas that would rid him of the accusation and at the same time enable Maxwell to marry off his eldest stepdaughter, Jane Ryder, to a member of the lower nobility, as Brome Whorwood was regarded. The marriage went ahead on September 22nd 1634 in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in London and at some time between then and midnight the same day Sir Thomas died. He was not buried in Holton church until 27th October. The arrival of Jane did not seem to herald much luck for the family and she was probably ever after regarded by her widowed mother-in-law, Ursula, as a curse but it could be thought that Sir Thomas might have received his just deserts for the marriage deal was made to save him from imprisonment or worse. Jane Whorwood has been the subject of a very well researched book by John Fox, ‘The King’s Smuggler: Jane Whorwood, Secret Agent to Charles I’ (The History Press 2010). With John’s permission I am going to relate a potted history of her remarkable life in relation to the Whorwoods, Holton and Charles I. Jane Ryder was born in Whitehall in 1615, her father was a groom to James I but when he died in 1612 her Oliver Cromwell from the Robert Walker portrait given to mother, Elizabeth de Boussy , remarried James Maxwell, the Whorwood family (Bodleian Library) later Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles I and Black Rod. Jane was brought up in a house on Charing Cross, on the south side of Trafalgar Square today. The whole of that area was dominated by the Royal Mews (stables) linked to Whitehall Palace, the principal residence of the King. The many Scottish immigrant families that took up residence around the palace after 1603 led to it being nicknamed ‘Scotland Yard.’ It is even speculated that Maxwell’s children may have shared the royal nursery and that Jane might have met Charles during his adolescence as a weak and sickly child very much in the shadow of his popular and more able elder brother Henry, Prince of Wales, who tragically died in 1619 leaving the throne for Charles to inherit.

General Fairfax Commander of the Parliamentary Forces

Anthony Wood, Oxford’s resident writer and gossip, described Jane after her marriage as ‘ tall, pock mark’d, red haired, but handsome.’ Not particularly qualities that might attract a husband from the English gentry, but then he described Brome Whorwood as ‘of no religion, and a clownish and ill-natured person.’ Unfortunately Jane was to discover that Brome was indeed ‘a bore’ who openly took a mistress called Katherine Allen, and over the years berated his wife and very possibly beat her senseless on occasions during the long years after

the Civil War. In 1663 Jane brought her case to the bar of the House of Commons, where Brome was elected as M.P. for Oxford on four successive occasions. This test case of the spouse of an MP extending his privilege as an M.P. to her was thrown out by the Commons and the ruling outlawed this extension of privilege to wives of MPs for ever. Jane seemed never to have any protection as a wife, and this was typical of the majority of women at the time, unless they were heiresses in their own right. Returning to the marriage day, this was the position that Ursula found herself in. She re-inherited the manors of Holton and Headington on the death of her husband leaving Brome to inherit Sandwell only, until the death of his mother in 1653. It is therefore likely that Jane and Brome went to live at Sandwell until the outbreak of the Civil War, by which time they had three children: Brome junior born 1635 (drowned in the Solent in 1657), Elizabeth born 1638 in London and buried in Holton 1640/1, and Diana born 1639. It was thought that the family would be safer close to the Royalist stronghold of Oxford in the house of Ursula at Holton once the war began. Jane too would have been glad to be nearer to the Court of the King and Queen, which transferred to Oxford between 1642 and 1646, even though she and Ursula disliked each other. In fact it does seem that Jane virtually abandoned her children to Ursula in order to throw her life into raising money for the King’s cause and protecting his life as far as she possibly could. The Civil War became one long series Charles and Jane’s coded of adventures for Jane, and again Wood describes her as ‘the most loyal person to signatures from their letters King Charles in his miseries as any woman in England.’ Indeed after Brome had fled to the Netherlands, and then France, after being accused of holding arms at Holton for the King after a skirmish at Islip in 1645, Jane seemed to be completely at the disposal of the King’s commissioners. She reputedly even took a lover in the person of Sir Thomas Bendish, who later became the King’s Ambassador to Constantinople, but it cost him £3,000 towards the King’s cause. She smuggled some of the King’s jewels from St James’ Palace in soap barrels to Oxford (they may have even been held in hiding at Holton for a short time), and individually raised over three tons of gold for the King in Oxford between 1644 and 1649. It is now also known that in the eighteen months prior to the King’s execution Jane was closely involved in the plots to help him to escape from captivity to safety in France with the Queen at the court of Louis XIV, her nephew. It was during the planning for the second escape attempt from Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight in 1648 that she and the King probably became lovers, if only for a very short time. His letters to her, of which now only three survive, speak of his love and care for her. Her alias was ‘N’ and sometimes ‘391’ as here in a letter of July 1648; ‘sweete 391, your two letters of 19th of this month I received late yesternight (23rd) and …….. I cannot give you greater compliment than …………….to satisfy your desires, I must tell you that without any difficulty you may see the king (me) and speak to him ( me) too, (as long as) you do not offer to whisper, but you will not get leave to speak privately with him (me) unless you had recommendations from Derby House so to do. Yet I imagine there is one way possible you may get a swyving from me. You must excuse my plain expressions…….’ (page 148. Fox. ‘The King’s Smuggler.’ 2010) This particular letter has caused some controversy between historians and members of the ‘Charles The Martyr Society’, who were concerned that such a relationship between Charles and another woman might besmirch his reputation as a loyal husband to Henrietta-Maria through the seven years of their separation. Clearly there is some suggestion here that the relationship between Charles and Jane had already , or was about to be, something more than solely platonic. Cover of ‘The King’s

During the coming months Jane became increasingly anxious about the King and his judgement Smuggler’ by John and, after waiting for three weeks on board a ship ready to transport him to the continent, she Fox gave up hope. The guards at Carisbrooke were easily bribed by the opposition and Charles was swiftly moved to Windsor and then to Westminster to face trial in January 1649. On the morning of his execution it

is said that Jane may have been the woman who greeted him as he took his final walk from Westminster to Whitehall and his execution outside the Banqueting House on the 30th. If that was the case, and Jane witnessed the King’s end, she must have felt that the world was about to end for her also. Indeed she had no choice now but to return to Holton. In 1651 she was brought before Parliament to answer for bribery charges in one of many cases against Royalists during the conflict, but other evidence relating to her part in the much larger plots never emerged, and although the court set a sentence of two years imprisonment, her sister, the Countess of Dirleton, raised £500 to have her released. Brome vowed never to raise any money for her at all. One famous episode relating to Bridget Cromwell by Peter Lely (National Holton House during the Civil Portrait Gallery) War happened when, during the sequestration of the house, Fairfax used it as his headquarters during the siege of Oxford in the early General Henry Ireton summer of 1646. Fairfax had been campaigning on the Somerset Levels and as always his wife had accompanied him, and had contracted malaria whilst there. When they reached Holton, Lady Ursula, still in residence, greeted them, and even though an ardent Royalist she hosted not only their household, but the wedding of Cromwell’s daughter Bridget to Henry Ireton - his second in command - on the 15th June 1646, ten days before the final fall of Oxford. The evidence for this is the actual entry in the Holton Parish Records for that year. That the wedding took place in the great hall of the house, not the church, was not unusual in itself, as civil marriage became more common during the Civil War, but it may have also been due to the fact that Holton church was still highly Anglicised and not a Puritan church having been in the pale of Royalist Oxford for the previous four years of the war. Here is the wedding entry made by Alban Eales the Rector of Holton: ‘Henry Ireton, Commissary general to Sir Thomas Fairfax and (erased, illegible) Bridget Cromwell, daughter to Oliver Cromwell, Leftenaunt General of the horse, to the said Sir Thomas Fairfax, were married (inserted) by Mr Dell in the Lady Whorwood her house in Holton, June 15th 1646.’ The wedding seems to have been planned to commemorate the first anniversary of the Battle of Naseby on 14th June 1645, but the wedding could not take place on the Sunday (14th) so Monday 15th was the next best day. There was also a feeling at the time that the war was almost over and that, with the fall of Oxford, the King would come to an agreement with Parliament. We must The Holton Register for the marriage of Bridget and Ireton

remember at this stage that we are a long way from 1649 and the King’s execution. No-one could have foreseen this in 1646. This wedding saw the alliance of two important parliamentary families, but Ireton was dead by the end of 1651, and there had been no children. It is also wonderful to imagine that the ardent Royalists, Lady Ursula and Jane herself, may have been present at the wedding of these two Parliamentary dynastic families taking place in a house that might have been harbouring pieces of the King’s jewels. After a further twenty-five years of marriage Jane was still suing for separation and divorce in 1684. This again failed, but it resulted in an inventory of the house which mentions certain pieces of jewellery which could have been left with Jane by Charles I . It is ironic that after decades of marital unhappiness Brome and Jane should die within six months of each other in 1684. Brome supported the Whig This Game Keeper’s statue once stood on cause in the arguments about the succession towards the end of Charles II’s the Island and commemorates his death reign. The King insisted that his Catholic brother, James Duke of York, during a shoot in the 18th century should succeed him as the King had no legitimate children. The Whigs though supported James’s eldest daughter Princess Mary who was married to William of Orange, and Brome seems to have put his name to an open rebellion in the Commons and was banned from the House. He was just about to be brought before a tribunal when he is reported to have collapsed and died in New Palace Yard, Westminster, in April, aged 69. His body was returned to Holton for burial. Jane was looked after during the last months of her life by her daughter, Diana Masters, who had inherited the estate. She was buried at Holton, but whether in the same grave as Brome is unknown! Diana died childless in 1701, and the estate passed to Thomas, Brome’s illegitimate son by Katherine Allen. Thomas took the name Whorwood as outlined in his father’s Will. He died at the age of 42 in 1706 and during the rest of the 18th century the estate passed through the Whorwood line, with the fourth Thomas of that name marrying Penelope Schutz of Shotover Park, his near neighbour, but they had no children. Little seems to have been done to the upkeep of the house during this time, except for the addition of new stables and a modification of other outbuildings opposite the main entrance to the house. The only view of the front of the house dates from this period (1787) showing the Island site and the gothic fronted older building.

The rear of Holton Park House on the Island during demolition in 1804 drawn by Dr Crotch. Note the arched window on the first floor. Was this the site of the medieval chapel?

In the same year it was reported in Jackson’s Oxford Journal that Captain Parker led the local hunt in chasing a fox from Holton all the way to

Reading, obviously some kind of local record at the time. Mrs Parker, the last tenant, died in the house in 1803. Henry Mayne Whorwood, an army captain, put the estate up for sale in 1800. The Whorwoods continued to reside in their manor of Headington after Henry Mayne bought the ‘mansion’ built by Sir Banks Jenkinson in 1770. It was now conveniently situated on the new Turnpike Road between Oxford and London, cutting out the difficult journey over Shotover. Today it stands in the grounds of the John Radcliffe Hospital and serves as an administrative annexe. Old Mr Whorwood, not Elisha Biscoe as is sometimes thought, had built a summerhouse on the Civil War gun emplacement, (south of the house), calling it ‘Little London’. Unwanted visitors were told (truthfully) that he was ‘in London’ when he wished to avoid seeing them. Elisha Biscoe bought the Manor of Holton in 1804 for £64,000.

Print of the old moated house with a view from opposite the Stables c.1793. Note the Elizabethan gothic frontage and the service bridge in the bottom right corner.

A Bellarmine jug maker’s stamp found at Wheatley Park (16th/17th c.)

A complete Bellarmine jug

The Biscoe Century 1800-1911. Images from the glass plate collection of Arthur Tyndale-Biscoe (1872-1969)

Guests arriving at the main entrance of Holton Park House c. 1895

The moat and Holton church c.1895

Holton Park dining room with spaniels. From left: Fanny , Julian, William and Edward Tyndale-Biscoe c.1894

The domestic staff c. 1895

Ice hockey on the moat - c.1895

Rosebud Tyndale-Biscoe daughter of Arthur Tyndale-Biscoe in 1916-17 (she died 13th March 2013 aged 101)

The south east face of Holton House with peach house - c.1895

The Holton Mummers—c. 1895 at Cherry Orchard

The Holton Village Fair - c.1895

Holton Village School circa 1895 (built by the Biscoe sisters in the 1850s).

Part of the Holton Park Archive at Wheatley Park School

The front cover of the 2013 book about Elizabeth Ambler’s remedy collection c.1730

The Breame Oak Tree, logo of Wheatley Park School

The first ordnance survey map of 1799 ( Updated to show the railway in the 19th century)

Painting of 1851 to celebrate the wedding of William Tyndale-Biscoe and Elizabeth Sandeman. Note the Breame oak tree and deer park in the background

The Biscoes and Earles 1805 -1866 The background of the Biscoe and Earle family alliance was one that reflected the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Both were families with strong links to the West Indies sugar trade and therefore inevitably to slavery, and indeed its decline. Elisha never married but was protective of his family and eventually left his estate to his sister Anne who had married into the Earle family of Swallowfield Park near Reading. The Earles had a similar family background to the Biscoes, part of the successful business merchant class of the second half of the 18th century. Elisha Biscoe who bought the manor of Holton in 1800 A page from Miss Ambler’s ‘Physik Book’ (Elisha’s probably intended to demolish it on purchase, despite the mother) rather romantic suggestion that its habitation by ghosts was the reason. In the end the main house could not be tackled until after 1803 when the sitting tenant, Mrs Parker, died. During those first few years Elisha settled into Holton Place, opposite the Church and developed the house and grounds there planting a series of unusual trees including a ginkgo. As soon as the Park House became available the demolition work started and the building of the new Georgian house was begun opposite the eastern side Elisha Biscoe’s charity school, Norwood, London of the Island, probably on the site of the original medieval walled kitchen garden, of which one small stretch remains. The house was the ultimate bachelor pad for Elisha; a modern symmetrical home, but reflecting the medieval style of the demolished house including crenellations, mock battlements and a central roof-type keep. This hid all the chimneys of the house that led from fireplaces which were placed on the interior walls, unlike most traditional English houses which had fireplaces on the exterior walls. Also no drainage was visible with lead pipes leading from the roof spaces down through the corner towers into the ground. The sash windows were large and brought into the rooms extensive views of the delightful grounds as Reputedly Pusey’s drawing of Holton Park in the 1830s (Bodleian Library) well as giving the house a modern

Frances Letitia and Elizabeth Dorothy Biscoe

and more elegant look from the park. The interior of the house consisted of four main reception rooms downstairs and a similar number of bedrooms and dressing rooms upstairs, but it is thought that Elisha had a suite of rooms - bedroom, dressing room, library and study - at the front of the house on the first floor, facing the pleasure gardens on the island. Elisha died in 1829 on the operating table in the Manor House undergoing an operation for ‘the stone’ (kidney stone). He left the estate to his widowed sister, Anne Earle, of Swallowfield Place, near Reading. Mrs Earle and her daughters took on the name Biscoe and lived at Holton Cottage. Anne died in 1834 and the younger daughters, Elizabeth Dorothy and Frances Letitia, succeeded to the estate, finally moving into the Park House in 1845. During the 1830s Lady Pusey was a tenant in the house and her son, the famous theologian E.B Pusey, lived there with her, and subsequently stated that he had loved his time on the estate, and his sketches of the house and Wheatley are deposited in the Bodleian Library.

The Breame Oak with the serpent and the sisters

After the death of their two older childless brothers by 1847, Elizabeth and Frances willed that the estate would then pass to the family of their elder sister Mary Anne, wife of William Tyndale, Rector of Holton. This agreement may have been symbolised by the serpent hanging from the

Breame Oak painting: the Biscoe sisters walk underneath the tree. Both sisters lived to the age of 88, and when Frances died in 1865, the estate passed to their nephew William Tyndale, son of Mary Anne and William the Rector. He adopted the name Biscoe, a requisite of Elisha’s will; William then re-adopted the name Tyndale making the official surname Tyndale-Biscoe.

The Tyndale-Biscoes 1865-1911 The Park House now took on a new lease of life as a family home. William was married to Elizabeth Sandeman of port and sherry fame, and the house was extended to accommodate their growing family. To the servants’ quarters from the 1840s were added a nursery and billiard room in 1873. The Biscoes were the archetypal Victorian family: Henry (known as Stafford) born 1857, Frances born 1859, Albert 1861, Cecil 1863, Edward 1864, Julian 1867, George 1869 and Arthur 1872. William was Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire several times and Cecil, founded missionary schools in Kashmir, recognised for their moral tone, fairness and excellence. Cecil was an ‘Empire builder’, but one of great humanity, and Edward famously raised the first Union Flag in Rhodesia. Cecil’s autobiography

Tyndale Biscoe of Kashmir (posthumously published in 1951), paints a picture of childhood at Holton as happy, close and privileged. He was also the first to record a sighting of the ‘Blue Boy’ ghost. ‘I happened to be the first of the family to be honoured by an apparition. I was about twelve. It was ten at night and I was standing with my back against a table looking towards a flight of stairs. On the left was a glass door leading into the front hall where a lamp was burning on the table. In front of me to the right of the stairs was a dark passage leading to the middle hall, in which a lamp was burning. All of a sudden I saw a boy of about twelve running towards me very fast. I put out my arms to stop him as he turned sharp round the bottom of the staircase in order to go to the front hall. I noticed that his feet did not touch the ground. He ran straight through the closed glass doors and when he had reached the front hall, first his head, then his body went up suddenly in smoke as if he had exploded. I then ran into the drawing room where several members of my family were, shouting, ‘I have seen a ghost!’ they answered: ‘Shut up, don’t talk nonsense,’ but they could see how excited I was and that I was not fooling.’ The Blue Boy by Gainsborough fits Lady Barrigton Cecil’s story was later confirmed by his aunt, Lady Barrington KenKennet’s description of the ghost perfectly

net, who witnessed the same apparition. She met a Mrs Whorwood in Switzerland whose ancestors had once owned Holton and who reported that an eldest son of the family had been murdered by his governess and the body buried in the Park. Possibly the new Park House stands over his grave. The closest in age to the apparition would have been William Brome, George’s son and Lady Ursula’s brother, who died in 1599 aged 10 and is commemorated with a brass in St Bartholomew’s Church. There are also tales of ghostly dogs on the Island where the gravestones of Victorian family pets were erected. Despite the affection in which the tenants held the TyndaleBiscoes, the estate drained the family resources and Henry, after the death of his father, could not maintain both estate and family. He died in 1911 of appendicitis aged 54. His wife Ethel sold the estate in 1911 and the new owner, Alexander Crundale, sold it in separate lots in 1913. Bridge House in Wheatley, one of the family properties, was sold and became a Hotel. A long correspondence with Henry’s granddaughter, Primrose Gerrard, before her death in 1993, revealed that even at the end of the 20th century the family still felt the loss. Primrose’s father, Robert, emigrated to the West Indies and took with him many portraits and artefacts from the Park. Some of these have been donated to the school by Primrose’s older brother’s family and are now displayed in the school archive. When the Tyndale -Biscoe reunion took place in 1989, the family were delighted that the Park and the House had survived the 20th century and had a protected future as part of Wheatley Park School. In 2007 David Milanes loaned to the archive the collection of glass negatives from the 1890s, belonging to his grandfather Arthur Tyndale-Biscoe.

American Military Hospital 1943-1945 Aerial view 1951 when it was known as Wheatley BMH

Between the wars the Briggs and Balfour families owned the house and it is said that George V stayed there during the 1930s after being stranded during a snow storm. George V was related to Mrs Balfour who was a Lascelles. During the Second World War the land was requisitioned for an American military hospital specialising in head injuries (97th U.S. Army Field Hospital, later BMH Wheatley, RAMC, until 1961). This changed the character of the Park. Former hospital ward huts and domestic quarters could still be seen on the school and Brookes sites within the old estate wall until 2007. By the 1980s Holton Park was the home of a single, united secondary school for the The building of the A40 in 1963 cutting straight through the park Wheatley area and the compromise name of Wheatley Park School became permanent. The 17th-entury stable block was restored and converted into an English and Sixth Form Centre. That in turn has been relocated to the former John Watson School, sited close to the disused entrance of the U.S. hospital. Oxford Brookes University, formerly Oxford Polytechnic (and before that the Lady Spencer Churchill teacher training college relocated from a post-war site at Bletchley Park), occupies the rest of the Park. The moated Island is a protected site and the Park House (Arts Centre) and the Stables are Grade II Listed buildings. Luckily the site has kept some of its atmosphere. The rare Venison House was restored in 2000. The walled deer park, even at the end of the 19th century, included scarce white deer (The White Hart, named from the white stag, has been a Wheatley inn name for centuries), and the medieval rabbit warren lies hidden near Warren Farm. The large walled kitchen garden is still secretly overgrown at the Southern tip of the Park. Unfortunately the A40, built as the Wheatley bypass in 1963, runs through the estate. Today one can only imagine its tranquillity without the roar of the 21st century. It is up to present and future generations to raise the historic profile of the Park, inhabited over at least three millennia. Its story continues into a fourth, thanks to the school archive and the local village and family communities linked through its work. Bibliography: John Fox. ‘The King’s Smuggler: Jane Whorwood, Secret Agent to Charles I ‘ Holton Park Girls’ Grammar School 1950s . Girls learning how to be ‘good housewives’

Marilyn Yurdan’s book based on her

Victoria County History Oxfordtime at Holton Park Girls’ Grammar shire. Vol V School