Heythrop Park

Heythrop Park is an early 18th-century country house 1 mile (1.6 km) southeast of Heythrop in Oxfordshire. It was designed by the architect Thomas Archer in the Baroque style for Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury. A fire in 1831 destroyed the original interior. From 1922 until 1999 Heythrop housed first a Jesuit tertiary education college, and later a training establishment. The house is now the main building of the Heythrop Park Hotel, Golf & Country Club.

Architecture

Heythrop

Coordinates: 51°57′00″N 1°29′28″W / 51.950°N 1.491°W / 51.950; -1.491

Heythrop is a village and civil parish just over 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. The parish includes the hamlet of Dunthrop.

Heythrop had a Norman parish church of Saint Nicholas, but the nave has been demolished and only the chancel has been preserved as a mortuary chapel. The chapel's west doorway was the south doorway of the former nave.

In 1657 an attempt to merge the Benefices of Enstone and Heythrop was abandoned in the face of local opposition. In 1923 the incumbent of Heythrop ceased to live in the parish and in 1964 it and Enstone were finally merged. In 2001 the Benefice of Enstone and Heythrop merged with that of Ascott-under-Wychwood, Chadlington, and Spelsbury to form the Chase Benefice.

Heythrop House in Heythrop Park was built from 1706 onwards by the architect Thomas Archer for Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury. It was gutted by fire in 1831 and restored by the architect Alfred Waterhouse in 1871 for Albert Brassey. It was a Jesuit college from 1922 until 1969 and a training college for the National Westminster Bank from 1969 until 1999.