Ditchley, Charlbury, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

An early 18th-century country house with 18th-century landscape park and remains of an early 18th-century formal layout. Informal pleasure grounds laid out by John Claudius Loudon 1805-10, and formal gardens by Geoffrey Jellicoe 1930s.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Ditchley Park lies about 16 kilometres north-west of Oxford, 2 kilometres north-east of Charlbury, within the confines of the medieval Royal Forest of Wychwood. The roughly 180 hectare park, bounded by agricultural land and woodland, lies on undulating land at the eastern edge of the Cotswold hills in a rural setting. An important part of this setting lies immediately adjacent to the north (outside the area here registered), and includes the former New Park and open arable land to the east, bounded to the north by a broad woodland belt including Shilcott Wood, Laurel Wood, Deadman's Riding Wood and Dogkennel Wood. Shilcott Light, cut through Shilcott Wood, is aligned on the garden front of the House, as is Heythrop Light, which extends north-west from the House through the pleasure grounds and Deadman's Riding Wood beyond, aligned on Heythrop Park house about 5 kilometres away. Heythrop Light may have been part of Gibbs' 1726 design, and had certainly appeared by the end of the 18th century (Davies, 1797). Ditchley lies at the centre of a group of designed parks including Blenheim, Cornbury, Eynsham and Heythrop, none of which are more than
9km distant (there are descriptions of all four of these sites elsewhere in the Register).

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Country Life, 75 (9 June 1934), pp 590-5; (16 June 1934), pp 622-8; 178 (24 October 1985), pp 1173-7

N Pevsner and J Sherwood, The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire (1974), pp 572-6

D Stroud, Capability Brown (1975), p 222

F Woodward, Oxfordshire Parks (1982), p 10

Garden History 10, no 1 (1982), pp 80-91

D Ottewill, Edwardian Gardens (1984), p 200

C Leslie, The Ditchley Gardens, (unpublished manusrcipt 1987)

M Spens, The Complete Landscape Designs and Gardens of Geoffrey Jellicoe (1994), pp 48-51

Ditchley Park, guidebook, (1995)

Maps

Edward Grantham, Map of Ditchley, 1726 (Oxfordshire County Record Office; related maps at Bodleian Library)

A plan of the coach road through Lord Litchfield's field from Blenheim to Blandford Park, 1753 (Oxfordshire County Record Office)

Enclosure map, 1779 (Oxfordshire County Record Office)

R Davis, A New Map of the County of Oxford ..., 1797

A map of the roads as set out by the Commissioners of the Spelsbury Enclosure, 1803 (Oxfordshire County Record Office)

A Bryant, Map of the County of Oxford ..., surveyed 1823

A Jones (CPRE), Ditchley Park, 1982 (copy on EH file)

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1884; 2nd edition published 1900

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1881
 

Description written: March 1998

Amended: March 1999; April 1999

Edited: January 2000