Chastleton House, located in Oxfordshire, is a Jacobean manor built at the beginning of the 1600s from local Cotswold stone. The house has an interior courtyard known as Dairy Court. It played a famous part in the Civil War as the wife of the home drugged Roundhead soldiers to save her husband who had been fighting in the battle at Worcester but escaped and rode back to the house after the side he was fighting on lost. He escaped while the drugged soldiers were sleeping.
Visitors to the house can see it as it was left to the National Trust in 1991 with all of the items owned by the family also given to the National Trust and left on display. The family occupied the home for over 400 years with the last owner living in only a couple of the rooms, and the rooms were left untidy. The house remained largely uncared for with a lot of repairs needing to be made. The family generally did odd fixes themselves, but they largely left things as they were. They were more focused on the arts than keeping a clean and uncluttered home.
Another famous fact about Chastleton was that it is considered the birthplace of croquet in the mid-1800s.
The house is used as a filming location, and "Wolf Hall" was filmed at the property.
The house is accessed down a small hill where sheep were roaming. It is about a ten-minute walk to the house from the parking and visitor centre.
The first room was the great hall, and we were given a quick introduction to the house and its later occupants here.
The White Parlour was a favourite of the rooms with a lot of natural light and garden views.
The Great Parlour was left primarily as it was without changing tastes as the family lost a lot of money in the Civil War. There is a tapestry on the opposite wall that was made in Lille in France.
I enjoyed the nice touch of freshly cut flowers in many of the rooms, and there were also a lot of house plants on display in various rooms, particularly in the hallways.
The Great Chamber was one of the most impressive rooms and left largely untouched. Tourists would come to visit the house before the National Trust acquired it. The carved paneling has a row of imagery depicting religious figures from Christianity and from the Classics along all walls.
Sheldon Room was another room that was lived in by the last owner and her twenty cats and one parrot. The tapestries helped to keep the heat in. Saucers of milk were left near the fireplace for the cats, and you can see where the boards are stained.
You can see the stained floor near the leg chair below.
The library housed a collection of books that country houses often had - from legal books to setting up tenants and then general history books. We were told that some of the books contain cat claw marks. On the table at the back is an important bible that is said to be read to King Charles I before his execution. In the table in front are a collection of a series depicting the king's life from younger days to his execution.
Another of the rooms that the last owner would show to tourists is the Cavalier Room, pictured below. It has since been wallpapered, but the back doorway is where Arthur Jones hid when he was followed after the defeat at the battle of Worcester. The Roundheads followed him, thinking he was the king. He hid inside the room, and with the help of his wife, Sarah, he out-smarted them. She fed them alcohol that made them tired, and he escaped.
Today, the little room contains a trunk. It is called a "trunk" because it was made from a hollowed-out log, fastened together with hinges.
The Long Gallery would have been used for exercise, balls, and to display portraits. At the back of the gallery is a cabinet filled with items discovered under the floorboards. these items were mainly toys because this is where the children would come to play. The Long Gallery is important because it is the longest one with a barrel vaulting of its time that survives today.
The kitchen was left largely untouched. It was never painted because the family believed it would bring bad luck.
Through the kitchen is a storeroom and stables with a long ladder that can reach the roof of the house.
From this door, visitors can access the gardens. There is a small kitchen garden and more formal gardens with some parkland. The iris flowers were in full bloom.
After visiting the house, I had a walk back up the hill with the sheep next to me.
That concludes my visit to Chastleton House.
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