Details
1046/0/10020 BLOXHAM ROAD
11-AUG-05 Wykham Park (Tudor Hall School), immed
iately to the south of C17 Wykham Park
Hall
GV II
ADDRRESS/NAME: Wykeham Park
BUILDING: Country house
DATE: 1740, with extensive additions and alterations of 1865-early C20.
ARCHITECT: Not known
MATERIALS: Ironstone ashlar, slate roof
PLAN: U-plan, south facing
FAÇADE: Overall two-storey, ironstone ashlar, with balustraded parapet concealing low roofs behind. East range: ten bays, with wooden sash windows to left-hand five bays and stone mullion and transoms to remainder. Fourth first-floor window from right end is an oriel, while the right-handmost window rises between the first and second storeys. Left-handmost three bays with pilasters representing east end of 1740 house. Set centrally against these is single-storey porch in early C18 style of 1865 or later. South range: the original entrance front (pilasters marking the 1740 fabric), turned into the garden front post-1865. Four canted bay windows, two full height probably of 1740 set between single storey ones (the right-hand single storey bay probably marking the position of the original entrance). At the left-hand end of the range full height ironstone bow at end of 1890 music room. West range: ironstone ashlar picture gallery (post-1903) lit by broad, full-height, bay windows. The inner courtyard is a complex jumble of service ranges, much of them post-1865 and with a great deal of remodelling to accommodate the school. On the north side of the courtyard is a substantial two-storey brick kitchen block of the late C20 (not of architectural interest).
INTERIORS: Drawing room at the south-east corner of the house has what are probably original 1740 doors and door cases with scrolled overdoors and a modillioned cornice. Otherwise the downstairs of the 1740 house was largely refitted between 1865 and the early C20. Rooms with notable finishes of Victorian or Edwardian date include the Main (Entrance) Hall, the current Library (which is panelled), the Staff Room, and the Ballroom, as well as the imposing staircase. Most of the principal ground floor rooms and some of the bedrooms (only limited inspection upstairs) retain Victorian/Edwardian fireplaces, doors, cornices etc.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: The right-hand half of the east range is fronted by a walled garden of post-1865 in C17 style with piers with ball finials to front, reflecting the walled court to its left to the front of the separately-listed Wykham Park Hall.
HISTORY: Wykham Park stands just beyond the south-west fringe of Banbury. Now little more than the complex comprising Wykham Park, in the Middle Ages Wykham was apparently a manor of some significance (the chief house of which received a licence to crenellate in 1330) with attached hamlet. In 1601 the manor passed to Thomas Chamberlayne, a judge, in whose time a new house (Wykeham Park Hall, listed grade II) was built. This was retained, and converted into stables, when in 1740 the then owner Sir James Dashwood (1715-70) built a replacement house 50 metres to its south. No architect is known for what was a relatively modest house with something in the order of six bedrooms. In 1801 Dashwood's son sold the property, and it changed hands several times again before in 1865 it was bought by William Mewburn (?1817-1900), a successful Methodist businessman. In his time the house was considerably extended, the main entrance moved from the south front to the east, and the interior refurbished. The surrounding gardens and parks were also much improved. In 1903 Mewburn's son sold the place to his brother-in-law Robert Perks, M.P., who added a new wing, picture gallery and library to the house. In 1945 Wykham was bought by the proprietors of Tudor Hall School (established 1850), an independent girls' school which remained in occupation in 2005.
SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: Wykham Park is a modest country house of 1740 (architect unknown) which saw considerable enlargement between 1865 and the early C20 under successive wealthy owners. Since then, despite institutional use, it has seen little substantive change. It forms part of a good country house and park complex, notable for the adaptation of its predecessor, which stands alongside it, as a stables. It meets the criteria to be added to the list at grade II.
SOURCES: V.C.H. Oxfordshire 10 (1978), 47; article on Wykham Park in Cake and Cockhorse (the magazine of the Banbury Historical Society)
