User:Hmbstewart

= Wytham Abbey =

Wytham Abbey is a privately-owned Grade I Listed Manor House situated in the village of Wytham, 3 miles (5 km) northwest of the centre of Oxford.

Described by The London Times (1991) as ‘one of the loveliest houses in England’, the Abbey lies at the edge of Wytham Woods, an area of long-established English woodland and protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Owned by the University of Oxford, the woods are used for world-class research in zoology and climate change.

History
Wytham Abbey is the manor-house of the small Oxfordshire village of Wytham. The place-name is first recorded as Wihtham around 957 and is thought to come from the Old English for a homestead or village in a river-bend. This is perhaps the root of the present pronunciation of the name - “White-ham”.

Known as ‘Wytham House’ until about 1850, Wytham Abbey was built around 1480 and formed part of the extensive lands of the Abbots of Abingdon held since the twelfth century. With Dissolution of the Monasteries, the estate was sold to Sir Richard Harcourt and thereafter passed by marriage to the Earls of Abingdon. The 5th Earl made the Abbey his principal seat in the early 1800s and significantly remodelled the building in the Georgian Gothic style, which it retains today.

In 1920, the 7th Earl sold the Abbey, along with the rest of the 2,500-acre estate, to Colonel Raymond ffennell, who subsequently bequeathed the whole to the University of Oxford. In 1956, the University divided the Abbey into 14 apartments. Over the next three decades, however, the fabric gradually fell into disrepair, and in 1991 the house and grounds were offered for sale. The current owners acquired the property and set about restoring the building and returning it to its historical use as a single family home.

During its life to date, the Abbey has hosted many illustrious guests. Queen Elizabeth I visited the house as a princess, as did the young Princess Victoria, later Queen, some 300 years later. The Abbey has had its share of military visitors, too, ranging from Oliver Cromwell during the second siege of Oxford in 1646 to Joachim von Ribbentrop in the 1930s who was a house guest while Hitler's Minister of Foreign Affairs.