VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Crowmarsh Gifford (Oct. 2016) • manors • p. 1
VCH Oxfordshire Texts in Progress
CROWMARSH GIFFORD
Manor and Estates
In the late Anglo-Saxon period Crowmarsh Gifford almost certainly belonged to the large royal estate focused on Benson, although the evidence is largely circumstantial.1 A separate 10-hide manor was created before the Norman Conquest, covering the whole of the later parish and possibly extending outside it.2 A part was subinfeudated in the 12th century and later became detached, perhaps giving rise to some of the small scattered freeholds recorded in the 18th and 19th centuries;3 the rest remained in single ownership, however, passing to a succession of mostly minor and sometimes resident lay owners, and covering three quarters of the parish in 1833. Thereafter it was gradually broken up. The medieval manor house was replaced in the 18th century by a new mansion house in Howbery park, which was sold separately from the manor in 1858. The manor itself was bought by the lord of neighbouring Newnham Murren, the lordship of Crowmarsh eventually lapsing in the mid 20th century. A few small parcels were held by local religious houses during the Middle Ages.
Crowmarsh Gifford (later Howbery) Manor
Descent to c.1500
In 1086 Crowmarsh Gifford was held of Walter Giffard (d. 1102) by Hugh Bolbec.4 Giffard’s overlordship passed to his son Walter (d. 1164) and then (with his other possessions) to the FitzGilberts and Marshals, earls of Pembroke.5 Thereafter it descended with the earldom until the latter’s resumption by the Crown in 1389, passing to Henry III’s half brother William de Valence (d. 1296) and to his Valence and Hastings successors.6 In the 14th century Crowmarsh was said to be held of the Valences’ manor of Bampton, and in 1534 of the Crown’s manor of Ewelme.7
1 Above, intro. (par. bdies); below, social hist. (Middle Ages); VCH Oxon. XVIII, 36. 2 VCH Oxon. I, 410; above, intro. (par. bdies). 3 Below (other estates). 4 VCH Oxon. I, 410. 5 Complete Peerage, II, 387; X, 352–76. 6 Ibid. X, 377–97; Close 1247–51, 102. 7 Black Prince’s Reg. IV, 181; TNA, C 142/57/72; below, local govt. VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Crowmarsh Gifford (Oct. 2016) • manors • p. 2
The mesne lordship passed to Bolbec’s son Walter (d. c.1142) and grandson Hugh (d. 1165), whose own young son Walter was left in Hugh’s brother’s wardship.8 Around 1168 the wardship was given to Reynold de Courtenay (d. 1191),9 whose daughter Egelina held 100s.-worth of land at Crowmarsh in 1219;10 the manor itself, however, seems to have been seized by Henry II, who granted it to Amfrey son of Roland. Amfrey’s son Alan exchanged it with the king in 1173 for the manors of Thenford (Northants.) and Aston Rowant,11 and Henry subsequently returned Crowmarsh to Walter Bolbec (d. 1190). Walter’s daughter Isabel (d. 1206 or 1207) was succeeded by her aunt Isabel (d. 1245), the younger Hugh’s daughter and wife of Robert de Vere, 3rd earl of Oxford.12 By then the manor was reckoned at one knight’s fee,13 though by the 1190s a third (worth £10 a year) appears to have been subinfeudated to the Pipard family of Rotherfield Peppard, and remained separate thereafter.14 Isabel was succeeded in the rest of the manor by her son Hugh (d. 1263), 4th earl of Oxford, and grandson Robert (d. 1296), the 5th earl,15 who in 1285 granted it to his daughter Joan (d. 1293) on her marriage to William de Warenne (d. 1286).16 Following Joan’s and William’s deaths it reverted to the earl, and in 1316 was held of Robert’s son Robert (d. 1331), the 6th earl, by Geoffrey de Hauteville.17 By 1346 the de Veres had subinfeudated the manor to Ralph Restwold (d. by 1362), the Black Prince’s steward of Benson, who was granted free warren at Crowmarsh.18 He was succeeded by his son Ralph (d. 1383) and by Ralph’s grandson Richard (d. 1423), a Cumberland MP, who in the 1390s let part of his Crowmarsh estate to John James of Wallingford.19 Richard’s son Richard (d. 1475) served as MP for Cumberland, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire,20 and though by then the Restwolds were probably non-resident, they continued to live nearby: the younger Richard’s son Thomas (d. 1480) died at his manor of Hedsor (Bucks.), and family members were buried at
8 Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants, 334–5; Pipe R 1165 (PRS 8), 22–3; Pipe R 1167 (PRS 11), 105. 9 Rotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et Puellis de XII Comitatibus (PRS 35), pp. xxxix–xl; Pipe R 1168 (PRS 12), 11; VCH Berks. IV, 372. 10 Book of Fees, I, 252; cf. Oxon. Fines, p. 1 (mentioning Reynold’s son Robert). 11 Pipe R 1173 (PRS 19), 77; Book of Fees, I, 116–17; Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants, 867. 12 Book of Fees, I, 117; Sanders, English Baronies, 98; Pipe R 1197 (PRS n.s. 8), 40; Complete Peerage, X, 208–13. 13 Book of Fees, II, 830. 14 Below (this section). 15 Cal. Inq. p.m. I, p. 185; Rot. Hund. II, 774; Feudal Aids, IV, 154; Complete Peerage, X, 213–18. 16 Cal. Close 1279–88, 449; Cal. Inq. p.m. II, p. 382; Complete Peerage, XII (1), 507. 17 Oxon. Fines, p. 222; Feudal Aids, IV, 171; TNA, E 179/161/8; OAS Trans. 39 (1900), 8. 18 Cal. Inq. p.m. X, p. 519; Cal. Chart. 1341–1417, 54; Black Prince’s Reg. IV, 181, 294; Hist. Parl. 1386–1421, s.v. Restwold. 19 Cal. Inq. p.m. XIII, p. 98; XVI, p. 20; XVII, p. 312; Cal. Close 1369–74, 589; 1374–7, 260; 1385–9, 58; Cal. Fine 1383–91, 9–10; Feudal Aids, IV, 200; Hist. Parl. 1386–1421, s.v. Restwold. 20 Hist. Parl. 1386–1421, s.v. Restwold; TNA, C 140/51/8. VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Crowmarsh Gifford (Oct. 2016) • manors • p. 3
the Franciscan friary at Reading.21 In 1503 Thomas’s son Richard (d. 1522) was involved in a (probably fictitious) recovery of the manor, by then called Howbery from its principal farmstead adjoining the churchyard. The date and circumstances of the family’s departure from Crowmarsh are uncertain, however.22 The Pipards’ right in a part of the manor was established by 1195, when Walter Pipard (d. 1214) held 10 librates of land in Crowmarsh. Presumably that represented the third of the manor held of the de Veres in 1279 by his successor Ralph Pipard (d. 1303), who had inherited from his father Ralph son of Ralph FitzNicholas. The share then comprised 3 yardlands in demesne, 5½ yardlands held by tenants, a share of two mills, and rents from 11 cottars.23 The estate passed to Ralph’s son John Pipard (d. 1331), who released it in 1310 to Peter of Wallingford,24 and probably it was acquired later by Sir William Bereford (d. 1326), lord of Newnham Murren, whose £10-worth of rents in Crowmarsh (held of Robert de Vere) was reckoned at a third of a knight’s fee.25 Thereafter part of it may have been held by John James of Wallingford, who obtained free warren in Crowmarsh in 1394.26
Descent from c.1500
By 1510 the Restwolds’ Howbery manor had been acquired by William Cope (d. 1513) of Hanwell, to whom the earlier grant of free warren was confirmed.27 Ownership passed to Cope’s son Stephen (d. 1534), of Bedhampton (Hants.), and grandson William (d. 1558) of Ashton in Bainton parish (Northants.),28 whose widow Joyce contested it against his brother Anthony.29 By the 1520s, however, the manor was held under the Copes by Edward Hildesley, formerly of East Ilsley (Berks.), who settled at Crowmarsh.30 The family were Roman Catholic recusants, and Edward’s son William (d. 1576) married Margaret Stonor of North Stoke;31 they were succeeded by their son Walter (d. 1596), whose lands were seized by the Crown in the 1580s–90s under the recusancy laws. Howbery farm was let from 1593 to Leonard Willmot and John Simmonds,32 while a request to the Crown in 1586 for a grant
21 Cal. Inq. p.m. Hen. VII, III, pp. 465–6; TNA, PROB 11/11/515 (1498). 22 TNA, CP 40/963, m. 344d. For later Restwolds, VCH Bucks. III, 188. 23 Oxon. Fines, p. 1; Rot. Hund. II, 774; Close 1237–42, 515; 1242–7, 184, 281; VCH Oxon. XVI, 311. 24 Abbrev. Plac. 312. 25 Cal. Inq. p.m. VI, p. 471; Cal. Close 1323–7, 614; below, Newnham Murren, manors. 26 Boarstall Cart. pp. 234, 238, 241, 246, 259; Cal. Inq. p.m. XVII, p. 312; Cal. Chart. 1341–1417, 349. 27 L&P Hen. VIII, I (1), p. 293; TNA, PROB 11/17/2; VCH Oxon. IX, 115. 28 TNA, PROB 11/25/240; ibid. C 142/57/72; N.H. Nicolas (ed.), Testamenta Vetusta (1826), II, 749. 29 TNA, C 3/33/64; C 3/34/17. 30 Ibid. E 179/161/195; E 179/162/233; VCH Berks. IV, 28. 31 TNA, PROB 11/58/435; Stapleton, Hist. of Post-Reformation Catholic Missions, 286; below, relig. hist (pastoral care). 32 Recusant Rolls 1581–92, 83, 92–3; 1592–3, 255; 1593–4, 123–4; 1594–6, 71–2; TNA, PROB 11/87/76; ibid. E 179/162/346. VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Crowmarsh Gifford (Oct. 2016) • manors • p. 4
of the manor’s fee farm may have similarly been in response to Hildesley’s forfeiture.33 Hildesley’s sister Cecilia (who married the Crowmarsh recusant Walter Bigg, d. 1619) remained in the village,34 but after Walter Hildesley’s death the manor probably reverted to the Copes’ successor Sir William Spencer (d. 1609) of Yarnton, who also acquired the neighbouring Preston Crowmarsh manor.35 Spencer’s heirs seem to have sold the manor to Sir Edward Clerke (d. 1639) of Reading, who in 1623 sold it to his cousin John Gregory of Wallingford subject to a £160 annual rent charge.36 Gregory’s son John, formerly resident at Howbery Farm, mortgaged it in 1668 to the Nottinghamshire Scrimshaw family, which attempted unsuccessfully to take possession;37 the Gregorys later lost their title, however, since by c.1688 the manor belonged to Jethro Tull (d. 1713), whose son Jethro began his career as an agricultural innovator there.38 Ownership passed later to Isaac Allibone, whose wife Dorothy (the younger Jethro Tull’s sister) was buried in the parish in 1737.39 The annual rent charge was retained by the Clerkes until 1718, when it was sold to the London alderman and MP Sir William Lewen (d. 1722).40 By 1740 the manor belonged to Robert Nedham (d. 1762), an MP and the son of a Jamaican estate owner. Robert lived at Howbery Park,41 which with the manor descended to his sons George (d. 1767) and William (d. 1806), also an MP.42 William was succeeded by his distant cousin Robert Needham (d. 1818), 11th Viscount Kilmorey, whose son Francis (d. 1832) was created 1st earl of Kilmorey in 1822.43 On his death the manor still covered over 500 a. or three quarters of the parish, but was gradually broken up through subsequent sales.44 Kilmorey’s trustees sold it with only c.345 a. in 1833 to William Seymour Blackstone (d. 1881), MP for Wallingford, who bought up other freeholds but went bankrupt while rebuilding the manor house in Howbery park.45 By 1845 it was held by Blackstone’s cousin the Revd Harry Lee, who in 1858 sold it without Howbery park to Charles Hedges (d. 1901),
33 HMC Salisbury MSS, XIII, 324. 34 Oxon. Visit. 182–3; H.E. Salter, ‘Recusants in Oxfordshire 1603–33’, OAS Rep. (1924), 17–49. 35 TNA, PROB 11/115/98; ibid. C 142/410/54; ibid. C 3/230/26; VCH Oxon. XVIII, 40. 36 TNA, PROB 11/179/300; OHC, P389/D/1. 37 BL, Egerton MS 3567, ff. 2–16; ibid. Egerton Ch. 5746–7; TNA, C 7/330/13; OHC, par. reg. transcript, s.a. 1639 (baptism). 38 TNA, C 11/1242/16; C 22/296/3; OHC, Cal. QS, III, 17; N. Hidden, ‘Jethro Tull I, II, and III’, Agric. Hist. Rev. 37 (1989), 26–35; ODNB; Pedgley, Crowmarsh, 27–9. 39 TNA, C 11/1242/16; BL, Add. MS 28672, ff. 283, 288–9, 291; OHC, Cal. QS, I, 254; ibid. par. reg. transcript, s.a. 1737. 40 BL, Add. MS 28672, ff. 282–6; Hist. Parl. 1715–54, s.v. Lewen; TNA, PROB 11/584/113. 41 TNA, C 202/128/2; Hist. Parl. 1715–54, s.v. Nedham; below (manor hos). 42 Hist. Parl. 1754–90, s.v. Nedham; Peters, Sheriffs, 158. 43 Complete Peerage, VII, 262–3 (the different spelling of the surname was deliberate). 44 OHC, CH/E I/iii/4; below (other estates). 45 OHC, P384/D/1; ibid. B21/7/78/D1/30; R.S. Sephton, William Seymour Blackstone (1809–81): A Wallingford MP (2003); below (manor hos). VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Crowmarsh Gifford (Oct. 2016) • manors • p. 5
lord of Newnham Murren.46 He retained only c.20 a. in Crowmarsh, mostly along the Wallingford–Henley road, although the lordship of Crowmarsh manor was included in sales of the Newnham Murren estate to W.H. Herbert in 1902,47 and to J.G. Hossack in 1908.48 Howbery park itself (c.80 a.) was sold in 1858 to the brothers Alfred and Edward de Mornay,49 who completed Blackstone’s unfinished mansion house50 and sold the estate in 1867 to Henry Bertie Watkin Williams-Wynn, who lived there until his death in 1895.51 In 1899 the estate (then 112 a.) failed to meet the reserve price at auction,52 and the house remained unoccupied until its purchase by the Dublin-born pneumatic tyre manufacturer Harvey du Cros in 1901–2.53 He died in 1918, and in 1920 the estate was bought by George Denison Faber (d. 1931), 1st Baron Wittenham, who tried unsuccessfully to sell it in 1930.54 His widow moved out soon afterwards, and the mansion house and grounds remained vacant until their requisition by the Royal Engineers in 1940. During the Second World War the estate served also as an American military camp, a repatriation centre for prisoners-of- war, and a Polish refugee camp.55 In 1951 the government-owned Hydraulics Research Station was established at Howbery Park, followed by the building there of the new Institute of Hydrology in 1972. The facility was privatized in 1982, and by 2016 HR Wallingford Group had developed the 70-a. estate as a science park.56
Manor Houses
Crowmarsh probably had a manor house by the mid 13th century, when a dwelling-house (mansum) in a 3-a. curia belonged to Hugh de Vere (d. 1263).57 On William de Warenne’s death in 1286 the ‘capital messuage’ was worth 6s. 8d. a year, and in 1316 it may have been
46 OHC, tithe award; Bucks. Herald, 26 June, 24 July 1858; below, Newnham Murren, manors. 47 Sale Cat., Newnham Manor Est. (1902): copy in Bodl. GA Oxon. b 6 (35); The Times, 1 Mar. 1902; Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1899–1907 edns). 48 Sale Cat., Newnham Manor Est. (1908): copy in NMR, SC00842; The Times, 27 June 1908; Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1911–28 edns); below, Newnham Murren, manors. 49 Oxf. Jnl, 3 July, 24 July 1858; Bucks. Herald, 17 July, 24 July 1858. 50 Below (manor hos). 51 PO Dir. Oxon. (1869–77 edns); Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1883–95 edns); Pedgley, Crowmarsh, 54–5. 52 The Times, 17 June, 21 June 1899. 53 Sale Cat., Col d’Arbres Est. (1901); The Times, 18 May 1901; Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1899–1915 edns); ODNB. 54 Complete Peerage, XIII, 279; Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1920–8 edns); The Times, 9–10 July 1930; Sale Cat., Howbery Park (1931): copy in OHC, SC 15. 55 Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1931–9 edns); Pedgley, Crowmarsh, 55; D. Beasley and A. Russell, Wallingford at War (2010), 86–7; Oxon. Atlas, p. 154. 56 TNA, WORK 12/381; The Times, 4 June 1973; D. Beasley, Wallingford Through Time (2013), 96; www.hrwallingford-group.co.uk (accessed Dec. 2015). 57 TNA, C 132/31/1. VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Crowmarsh Gifford (Oct. 2016) • manors • p. 6
occupied by Geoffrey de Hauteville.58 Later occupants included (possibly) some of the Restwolds and, from the 1520s until the late 16th century, the Hildesleys.59 In 1665 the manor house may have been let to William Loader, whose assessment at ten hearths was the highest in the parish, and presumably this was the ‘capital messuage and farm’ occupied by another 17th-century tenant, Griffith Payne of Wallingford.60 An early 18th-century rental described the manor house as having ‘nine rooms on a floor’, with two large barns, a stable for 12 horses, a carthouse, pigeonhouse, and other outbuildings, two orchards covering 2 a., fishponds, and 105 a. of adjacent farmland.61 The house has been identified with the 15th-century box-framed house at Nos 17 and 19 The Street,62 located between the site of the medieval castle on the west and the parish church on the east. Though the site is plausible for a manor house the link remains unproven, and several other candidates in that area (including Howbery Farm adjoining the churchyard) have since been demolished.63
The plaque on Nos 17 and 19 The Street
commemorating Jethro Tull (1674— A detail from an undated map of the Howbery
1741), ‘inventor of the horse-drawn seed park estate in the 1740s showing the church, drill’, who lived in the parish 1700—10. Howbery Farm, and Nos 17 and 19 The Street.
Howbery Park In the 1740s a new isolated manor house was built by Robert Nedham at the north end of the later Howbery park. The house faced westwards across a formal garden to the river, and to the south and east adjoined inclosed farmland; that was incorporated into the newly created park soon afterwards, and an avenue of trees made from the house to
58 Ibid. C 133/47/13; ibid. E 179/161/8. 59 Above (manor); below, social hist.; relig. hist. 60 Hearth Tax Oxon. 1; BL, Egerton MS 3567, f. 6; ibid. Egerton Ch. 5743. 61 OHC, CJ V/74. 62 For the building, above, intro. (built character). 63 Pedgley, Crowmarsh, 32–3; Bodl. MS Maps Oxon. a 1; OHC, tithe award and map, no. 94; OS Map 1:2500, Oxon. XLIX.11 (1878 edn). (Not to be confused with the later Howbery Fm on Benson Lane.) VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Crowmarsh Gifford (Oct. 2016) • manors • p. 7
Benson Lane.64 The house itself was largely destroyed by fire in 1757 but was rebuilt on the same site, and in the 1760s–70s it was intermittently occupied by the Nedhams.65 In 1779 it was burgled, and was available to let ten years later when it included a drawing room, breakfast parlour, hall, kitchen, servants’ hall, five bedrooms, and four servants’ bedrooms, together with a coach house, stables, and other outbuildings, a walled garden, a canalized water feature, and a 5-a. lawn.66 It was again advertized to let in 1800, but building materials from the house were for sale in 1810,67 and probably it was demolished soon afterwards.68 No manor house was mentioned at the estate’s sale in 1833,69 but by the late 1840s work on a replacement (on the same site but a different alignment) was sufficiently advanced for it to be habitable, and a cook was employed there in 1851.70 Blackstone’s bankruptcy in 1852 delayed progress, however, and at its sale in 1858 the house was described as ‘recently erected and partly unfinished in brick and stone’.71 Following its completion by the de Mornays in the early 1860s72 it was again extended in the late 19th century,73 and survives largely unaltered as offices belonging to HR Wallingford Group. Called Howbery House and later Howbery Park, the building is Jacobethan in style, built of red brick with Bath stone dressings, and with a complex slate roof and tall brick stacks.74 The irregular north entrance front incorporates a central stone vestibule with a glazed arcade and doric pilasters, while the symmetrical south (garden) front is flanked by cross-wings with shaped gables and imposing double-height mullioned and transomed bay windows. A pierced stone balustrade runs the length of the parapet, in the centre of which is a large heraldic device flanked by attic dormers. To the west, the one-and-a-half-storeyed former service wing is dominated by an octagonal brick water tower with an ogee lead roof, while a three-bayed conservatory and five-bayed stone loggia (both later removed) were added on the south- west in the late 19th and early 20th century. The interior contains original oak panelling and plaster ceilings, and a cantilever staircase with a wrought- and cast-iron balustrade. A group of slightly later ancillary buildings, added incrementally in the late 19th and early 20th century, survives to the north-east, built in similar style and grouped around a
64 Pedgley, Crowmarsh, 56; Bodl. MS Maps Oxon. a 1; Jefferys, Oxon. Map (1767); Davis, Oxon. Map (1797). 65 Oxf. Jnl Syn. 10 Feb. 1757; OHC, MSS Oxf. Dioc. d 555, f. 157; d 558, f. 176; d 561, f. 177. 66 Oxf. Jnl Syn. 24 Dec. 1779, 2 May 1789; Reading Mercury & Oxf. Gaz. 29 June 1789. 67 Reading Mercury & Oxf. Gaz. 5 May 1800; Oxf. Jnl, 1 Dec. 1810. 68 Cf. Bryant, Oxon. Map (1824); OS Map 1”, sheet XIII (1830 edn). 69 OHC, CH/E I/iii/4. 70 Ibid. tithe award and map; Oxf. Jnl, 5 June 1847; TNA, HO 107/1690, no. 69. 71 Bucks. Herald, 26 June 1858. 72 Oxf. Jnl, 28 May 1864. 73 Sale Cat., Howbery Park (1901): copy in Bodl. GA Oxon. b 90 (28). 74 Not yet visited by VCH. For other descriptions, Pevsner, Oxon. 562; Bldgs List, IoE 247221. Illust. in Sale Cat., Howbery Park (1901); OHC, HT2799; ibid. POX0032029; POX0032039; Pedgley, Crowmarsh, 55; D. Beasley, Around Wallingford (1998), 126. VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Crowmarsh Gifford (Oct. 2016) • manors • p. 8
courtyard. Amongst them is the brick-and-stone former stable block, featuring a shaped ‘Dutch’ gable, a stone oriel window, and an octagonal tower with a pyramidal roof. Adjoining, in slightly plainer Vernacular Revival style, is a pair of brick and stone cottages and a brick and tiled former lodge.75
Robert Nedham’s mansion house Howbery Park at its sale in 1901, before Harvey in Howbery park in the 1740s. du Cros extended the conservatory and built a stone loggia in the years immediately following his purchase of the estate.
Other Estates
Four medieval religious institutions were minor landholders or held other rights in the parish. The leper hospital founded at Crowmarsh in the 12th century stood on the main road by Wallingford bridge, and had pasturage in the meadow of Isabel, countess of Oxford.76 The hospital site itself was acquired by the Hildesleys following the Dissolution, and most of it remained part of the manor in the 19th century.77 Thame abbey was given three houses in Crowmarsh (most likely in the village) by Vincent of Nuffield probably in the late 12th century, and in the early 13th century William de Huntercumbe endowed the Knights Templar with land called ‘Wluerunescroft’, which had earlier belonged to Vincent’s son.78 Property belonging to Wallingford priory was given to Thomas Wolsey, archbishop of York, in 1528.79 A few freeholds recorded in the 1780s (some of them possibly of medieval origin) included several scattered parcels held by the Blackstones of Wallingford, and others held on behalf of the poor of Iffley, Littlemore, and Hampstead Norris (Berks.). In all Henry Blackstone paid around a tenth of the parish’s land tax in 1786, and the lord of the manor
75 Bldgs List, IoE 247222–4; OS Map 1:2500, Oxon. XLIX.7 (1877–1937 edns). 76 HMC 6th Rep. (1877), 585; below, relig. hist. (pastoral care). 77 Cal. Pat. 1557–8, p. 134; Berks RO, D/EH T66/1–4; OHC, tithe award and map. 78 H.E. Salter (ed.), Thame Cartulary, II (ORS 26, 1948), p. 120; A.M. Leys (ed.), Sandford Cartulary, I (ORS 19, 1938), pp. 32–3. 79 L&P Hen. VIII, IV (2), pp. 1957–8; N. Denholm-Young (ed.), Cartulary of the Medieval Archives of Christ Church (OHS 92, 1931), 182; below, relig. hist. (pastoral care). VCH Oxfordshire • Texts in Progress • Crowmarsh Gifford (Oct. 2016) • manors • p. 9
(William Nedham) around half, while fifteen other landowners paid the rest.80 Coldharbour farm (225 a. in the east of the parish) was separated from the manor in 1833, when it was bought as a separate ring-fenced estate by the Wallingford surgeon Robert Mayne Clarke; by 1845 he had increased it to 242 a.,81 and in 1862 his widow sold it to Alfred and Edward de Mornay, the owners of Howbery Park.82 Alfred de Mornay (d. 1900) renamed the estate Col d’Arbres, and established a renowned flock of Hampshire Down sheep there. In 1901 (when it covered 475 a. in Crowmarsh and 499 a. in all) it was sold to Frank Dore, who occupied the house but let the farmland. The farm was subsequently bought by its tenant John Edwards, who in 1921 let the house and 20 a. of grounds to Sir Cecil Harcourt-Smith (d. 1944), a former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum.83 The Edwardses later moved to Coldharbour, which they retained in 2016.84
80 OHC, QSD/L/92; VCH Oxon. V, 206. For Hampstead Norris, TNA, PROB 11/405/181. 81 OHC, CH/E I/iii/4; ibid. tithe award and map. 82 The Times, 28 May 1862; Sale Cat., Coldharbour Farm (1862): copy in OHC, PZ CROWb 333.3; Pedgley, Crowmarsh, 39. 83 Sale Cat., Col d’Arbres Est. (1901): copy in Bodl. GA Oxon. b 90 (28); The Times, 18 May 1901; OHC, DV XII/18; ibid. P187/D/1; Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1899–1931 edns); ODNB. 84 Kelly’s Dir. Oxon. (1935–9 edns); TNA, MAF 32/911/127; Oxon. Dir. (1958–9); Blair’s Dir. Oxon. (1967); Lond. Gaz. 1 Feb 2002; SODC planning docs, P07/W0253/AG (accessed online). For house, above, intro. (built character).