Nuneham Courtenay, (also known as Nuneham Park), Oxford, England

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

A country house surrounded by an 18th-century landscape park and pleasure grounds laid out in three phases: 1760s, the first Earl Harcourt's classical landscape to offset his Greek 'temple' (church); William Mason's picturesque landscape of 1777 for the second Earl (Mason having laid out a famous flower garden here in 1771); the parkland laid out by Lancelot Brown 1779-82 (supervised by the second Earl and Mason), when he also laid out Brown's Walk in the pleasure grounds. A pinetum and other work was carried out by W S Gilpin, 1832.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Nuneham Park lies 6 kilometres south of Oxford, adjacent to the west side of the village of Nuneham Courtenay. The 470ha estate is bounded to the west by the River Thames, and on the other sides largely by agricultural land and woodland. The largely rural setting also includes Culham scientific laboratories to the south. The park overlies low, undulating hills, with a steep slope towards the west boundary where the land drops down to the river. Important long views look west towards Abingdon and north towards Oxford.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

Country Life, 34 (29 November 1913), pp 740-55; 90 (7 November 1941), pp 866-70; (14 November 1941), pp 910-13; 144-5 September 1968), pp 541-2; (12 September 1968), pp 640-2

Victoria History of the County of Oxfordshire 5, (1957), pp 234-42

Oxoniensia XXXIII, (1968), pp 108-24

M Beresford, Deserted Medieval Villages (1971), pp 54-6

N Pevsner and J Sherwood, The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire (1974), pp 726-9

D Stroud, Capability Brown (1975), pp 189, 235, plates 60A & B

M Binney and A Hills, Elysian Gardens, (SAVE 1979), p 18

Nuneham, guidebook, (M Batey, 2nd edition 1979)

F Woodward, Oxfordshire Parks (1982), pp 24, 26

M Batey, Oxford Gardens (1982), pp 118-21, 136-67

RCHM(E), Yesterday's Gardens, (1983), illustration 68

D Jacques, Georgian Gardens (1983), pp 94-5

Maps

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

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

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1881-2; 2nd edition published 1901; 3rd edition published 1938

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1875
 

Description written: November 1997

Amended: March 1999

Edited: March 2000