Visit Nuneham Courtenay Places

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The Walkfo guide to things to do & explore in Nuneham Courtenay

  

Nuneham Courtenay Places Overview: History, Culture & Facts about Nuneham Courtenay

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Nuneham Courtenay history

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The toponym was Newenham from the 11th century on, until it was changed to “Nuneham” in 1764.

Roman

The remains of a Roman pottery kiln were discovered in 1991 during excavations to lay a new water main for Thames Water. The kiln was about 1+1/2 miles (2.4 km) west of the Roman road that linked the Roman towns at Dorchester on Thames and Alchester.

Newenham—Nuneham Manor

Some time between the Norman conquest of England in 1066 and the completion of the Domesday Book in 1086 William the Conqueror granted the manor of Newenham to one of his Normans barons, Richard de Courcy. It remained in his family until the death of his great-grandson, William (III) de Courcy in 1176. It then passed from William de Courcy’s widow Gundreda via her female heirs to Baldwin de Redvers, 7th Earl of Devon. Baldwin died without an heir, so Newenham again passed to a female “overlord”, Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of Devon. She too died without an heir, but in 1310 King Edward II granted Newenham to Hugh de Courtenay, 9th Earl of Devon. Newenham remained in the Courtenay family until the latter part of the 14th century, when Sir Peter de Courtenay, son of Hugh de Courtenay, 10th Earl of Devon sold his inheritance of the estate to Sir Hugh Segrave. Under the terms of the sale Margaret de Bohun, 2nd Countess of Devon retained the use of Newenham Courtenay for life. However, Sir Hugh Segrave died in 1386 and the Countess outlived him, so upon her death in 1391 the manor passed to Segrave’s aunt’s grandson, Sir John Drayton, who was Member of Parliament for Oxfordshire (October 1404) and Gloucestershire (1410). Sir John died in 1417 leaving the manor to his widow Isabel, younger daughter of Sir Maurice Russell (died 1416) of Dyrham, Gloucestershire and Kingston Russell, Dorset. Isabel then married, her 4th husband, Stephen Hatfield. After some legal problems concerning the title to the manor, in 1425 Isabel and Hatfield sold the reversion of the manor, reserving a life interest to themselves, to Thomas Chaucer (c. 1367–1434 or 1435), son of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer and Speaker of the House of Commons on five occasions between 1407 and 1421. Upon Isabel’s death in 1437, Newenham Courtenay passed to Alice Chaucer, daughter of Thomas Chaucer. Alice was married to William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk. The manor remained in the de la Pole family until 1502, when Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk was outlawed and forfeited his lands for allegedly plotting a Yorkist rebellion against Henry VII. In 1514 Henry VIII made his brother-in-law Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk, and granted him the forfeited de la Pole estates. In 1528 Brandon conveyed Newenham Courtenay to Cardinal Wolsey, but the following year King Henry VIII deposed Wolsey. The manor was administered by royal stewards until 1544, when it was bought by John Pollard. Pollard lived at Newenham Courtenay until his death in 1557. He left the use of the manor to his widow Mary, with the estate to pass to two of his male relatives upon her death. Dame Mary, however, remarried in 1561 and lived to be over 100, outliving the heirs whom Pollard had appointed. She eventually died in 1606 and the estate passed to a younger John Pollard. John transferred Newenham Courtenay to his son Lewis, but both men were in debt and in 1634 Lewis sold the estate to the wealthy lawyer Hugh Audley. In 1640, Audley sold Newenham Courtenay to Robert Wright, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. Wright supported Archbishop Laud, for which Parliament imprisoned him. He died in 1643 and his son Calvert inherited Newenham Courtenay. Calvert wasted his father’s fortune, sold Newenham Courtenay in 1653, was imprisoned as a debtor, and died in the King’s Bench Prison in Southwark in 1666. Calvert Wright’s buyer was Sir John Robinson, 1st Baronet, of London, a City of London businessman who reported that it cost him more to clear the debts of Newenham Courtenay than to buy the estate. Robinson left the estate to his two daughters, who in 1710 sold it to Sir Simon Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt. Sir Simon was created Viscount Harcourt in 1721 and died in 1727. He was succeeded by his grandson Simon Harcourt, 2nd Viscount Harcourt, who was created 1st Earl Harcourt in 1749. Upon the death of William Harcourt, 3rd Earl Harcourt in 1830 the earldom became extinct, and the estate, now called Nuneham Courtenay, passed to the first Earl’s nephew Edward Venables-Vernon, Archbishop of York, who then changed his name to Venables-Vernon-Harcourt. Manorial rights were in England abated in the 19th century. The estate remained in the family until 1948, when William Edward Harcourt, 2nd Viscount Harcourt (1908–1979) sold what remained of the manor to the University of Oxford. The rectory and manor house used to accompany a small village with a medieval parish church standing on the most sudden part of the village’s river bluff, all with a westward view over the River Thames. The manor house may have dated from the 16th century. The 1st Earl demolished the house, medieval church, and ‘tumble-down clay-built’ cottages of the village, and built a new parish church with an entirely new Nuneham Courtenay village almost 1 mile (1.6 km) north east to make way for his planned English style landscape park and new Nuneham House. The privately-owned, two-storey Old Rectory was built in 1759 on the northern boundary, by the first Earl. It was a Grade II listed building in 1963 as part of the “Nuneham Courtney Park and Garden”. The new village comprised two identical rows of brick-built semi-detached cottages, each of a single main storey plus an attic floor with dormer windows. The two identical rows face each other across the Oxford–Reading and Henley-on-Thames (i.e. south-east) main road, which had been made a turnpike in 1736. (It has been classified the A4074 since the 20th century.) As the village population has subsequently grown, additional cottages have been added in similar styles early in the 19th century and again early in the 20th century. The old village had a village green. The new village has none, but was built to a spacious plan with gardens for every cottage and verges between them and the main road. In the 1760s the Irish writer, poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith witnessed the demolition of a medieval village and destruction of its farms to clear land to become a wealthy man’s garden. 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. The Deserted Village gave the demolished medieval village the pseudonym “Sweet Auburn” and Goldsmith did not disclose the real village on which he based it. He did, however, indicate it was about 50 miles (80 km) from London and it is widely believed to have been Nuneham Courtenay. The ‘new’ Nuneham House was designed by the architect Stiff Leadbetter in 1756. The design was changed and enlarged twice during construction, so that the house when completed in 1764 was far from the compact Palladian villa designed eight years earlier. The Poet Laureate William Whitehead was a visitor, and it was he who coined the change of spelling from “Newenham” to “Nuneham” in 1764. The Archbishop of York commissioned the architect Robert Smirke to make unaesthetic but functional extensions to the house in the 1830s. Further alterations to the house were made in 1904. The design of the original landscape garden park owed much to the poet and gardener the Rev. William Mason, who designed its formal flower garden in 1771. George Simon Harcourt, 2nd Earl Harcourt commissioned the renowned Lancelot “Capability” Brown to make alterations to the landscape garden park in 1779, and the house in 1781. The works were completed in the autumn of 1782, shortly before Brown’s death. William Whitehead’s poem The Late Improvements at Nuneham celebrated Brown’s work. Brown had planned a Gothic Revival tower folly for a prominent site overlooking the Thames. In 1787, however, the University of Oxford dismantled Carfax Conduit, which had been built in 1617 in the centre of Oxford. The 2nd Earl re-erected the Conduit building in his park instead of the proposed tower. In the 1830s Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, Archbishop of York, destroyed William Mason’s formal flower garden and most of the landscape park’s sculptures. He bought and added adjacent land in Marsh Baldon parish to extend the park eastwards as far as the Oxford–Dorchester main road. On this new land he had the artist W.S. Gilpin design a Doric entrance lodge in the 1830s. The Archbishop had a pinetum botanical garden planted in 1835. In 1963 the arboretum became Harcourt Arboretum, part of the tree and plant collection of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden. It includes 10 acres (4 ha) of woodland and a 37-acre (15 ha) wildflower meadow.

Nuneham Courtenay geography / climate

The 2011 Census recorded the parish’s population as 200. The parish is on a light escarpment running north-east to south-west. Its highest point is a tiny knoll 100 metres above sea level.

You can visit Nuneham Courtenay places with Walkfo Nuneham Courtenay to hear history at Nuneham Courtenay’s places whilst walking around using the free digital tour app. Walkfo Nuneham Courtenay has 37 places to visit in our interactive Nuneham Courtenay map, with amazing history, culture & travel facts you can explore the same way you would at a museum or art gallery with information audio headset. With Walkfo, you can travel by foot, bike or bus throughout Nuneham Courtenay, being in the moment, without digital distraction or limits to a specific walking route. Our historic audio walks, National Trust interactive audio experiences, digital tour guides for English Heritage locations are available at Nuneham Courtenay places, with a AI tour guide to help you get the best from a visit to Nuneham Courtenay & the surrounding areas.

“Curated content for millions of locations across the UK, with 37 audio facts unique to Nuneham Courtenay places in an interactive Nuneham Courtenay map you can explore.”

Walkfo: Visit Nuneham Courtenay Places Map
37 tourist, history, culture & geography spots

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Nuneham Courtenay historic spots	Nuneham Courtenay tourist destinations	Nuneham Courtenay plaques	Nuneham Courtenay geographic features
Walkfo Nuneham Courtenay tourism map key: places to see & visit like National Trust sites, Blue Plaques, English Heritage locations & top tourist destinations in Nuneham Courtenay

  

Best Nuneham Courtenay places to visit

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Nuneham Courtenay has places to explore by foot, bike or bus. Below are a selection of the varied Nuneham Courtenay’s destinations you can visit with additional content available at the Walkfo Nuneham Courtenay’s information audio spots:

Garsington Manor Garsington Manor, near Oxford, is a Grade II* listed country house dating from the 17th century. Its fame derives principally from its owner in the early 20th century, the “legendary Ottoline Morrell, who held court from 1915 to 1924”. Members of the Bloomsbury Group, the aristocratic Ottoline, and her wealthy husband Philip, were friends with an array of artists, writers and intellectuals.

Culham Centre for Fusion Energy The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) is the UK’s national laboratory for fusion research. It is located at the Culham Science Centre, near Culham, Oxfordshire, and is the site of the Joint European Torus (JET) and the now closed Small Tight Aspect Ratio Tokamak (START) The centre has been engaged in work towards the final detailed design of ITER as well as preparatory work for DEMO.

Old All Saints Church, Nuneham Courtenay Old All Saints Church, or Harcourt Chapel, is a redundant Church of England church near the village of Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building.

Visit Nuneham Courtenay plaques