Great Tew, Chipping Norton, England

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

A landscape park originating in the 17th century, attached to an early 18th-century country house with large 19th-century additions, with informal pleasure grounds and a series of 17th-century walled gardens. A further area of parkland, laid out in the early 19th century, lies detached from the earlier park, its siting and layout influenced by Humphry Repton who visited in 1803 and provided advice in a Red Book of 1804. Elements of this area were laid out by John Claudius Loudon who managed much of the estate between 1808 and 1811 at the beginning of his career, and it was subsequently embellished during the rest of the century.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING 

Great Tew lies in north Oxfordshire, approximately equidistant from the A4260 Oxford to Banbury road to the east and the A44 Oxford to Stratford-upon-Avon road to the west. The roughly 150 hectare site is bounded to the east and north by agricultural land, to the west partly by the village of Great Tew and partly by further agricultural land, and to the south largely by a lane linking Ledwell to the east with Little Tew to the west. The site is dominated by a valley running from west to east containing a small stream. The south side of the valley dividing the two areas of the designed landscape contains much of the village, the rest being laid to agricultural land, and lies outside the area here registered. The setting is rural and includes the rest of the Great Tew estate, which extends northwards to the A361 Chipping Norton to Banbury road and to the B4031 which leads east off the A361 to Deddington. This estate land is now largely agricultural but retains many belts, clumps, and copses, laid out as both functional and ornamental features during the 19th century, from Loudon's time onwards, including Round Hill which was formerly laid out as parkland (OS 1880, outside the area here registered). Long views extend north from the old park and pleasure grounds on the south side of the valley towards the north side of the valley and the detached parkland and other agricultural land, and north-east across the course of the former avenue to distant hills. 

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

J C Loudon, An immediate and effectual mode of raising the rental of landed property (1808)

J C Loudon, Observations on laying out farms in the Scotch style (1812)

J Sinclair, Husbandry in the More Improved Districts of Scotland (1812), Appendix III

Country Life, 106 (22 July 1949), pp 254(7; 177 (27 June 1985), pp 1874-5

Victoria History of the County of Oxfordshire XI, (1983), pp 223-47

D Lambert, Tew Park The Development of the Historic Landscape, (Historic survey 2001)

Maps

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

Bryant, Map of the County of Oxford, 1824

G N Haden and Son, Trowbridge, Plans of The New Gardens, 1872 (Full.II/iv/15), (Oxfordshire Record Office)

Plan of part of the Wilderness at Great Tew (nd, C19) (Full.II/iii/20), (Oxfordshire Record Office)

OS Surveyor's drawing, 1814

OS 1" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1833

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition published around 1880; 3rd edition published 1923

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1880, published 1881

Illustrations

I Blackmore, The south-east prospect of Tew House the seat of Anthony Keck Tracey, 1764 (private collection)

Archival items

H Repton, Red Book for Great Tew, 1804 (private collection)

Soho archive (Birmingham Reference Library)

G F Stratton, 'Letter from George Frederick Stratton, Esq, to Sir John Sinclair, Bart, explaining the Origin and Progress of the Scotch System of Husbandry, introduced by him on his Estates in Oxfordshire', 1810 (reproduced in Sinclair 1812, App III)
 

Description written: July 2001

Edited: November 2001