Ditchley Park

Ditchley was a medieval village recorded between the 14th and 17th centuries. No trace of the deserted medieval village is now visible.[1] Ditchley once provided lodging and access to the royal hunting ground of Wychwood Forest.[2] In the Elizabethan era, the estate was purchased by the Lee family. Sir Henry Lee (1533-1611) was a noted courtier. He commissioned the Ditchley Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, which shows her standing on a map of the British Isles, surveying her dominions; one foot rests near Ditchley in Oxfordshire, to commemorate her visit to Sir Henry Lee there.[3] He was later noted for declining to receive his monarch a second time, because of the enormous expense.[4] King James VI and I and Anne of Denmark visited on 15 September 1603 with the French ambassador and a duke, whom Arbella Stuart called the "Dutchkin."[5][6]

Subsequent occupants include Sir Henry Lee, 1st Bt., of Quarendon, later of Ditchley (died by 1632), Sir Francis Henry Lee, 2nd Bt., of Quarendon (1616–1639), his widow Anne, Countess of Rochester, The 2nd Earl of Rochester who was born at the house, Sir Henry Lee, 3rd Bt. ( 1633–1659), Sir Francis Lee, 4th Baronet of Quarendon, Charlotte, Countess of Lichfield, illegitimate daughter of Charles II, and Robert Lee, 4th Earl of Lichfield. In 1763 architect Stiff Leadbetter designed and built an Ionic rotunda in the grounds for the Earl.[7] The estate then became the property of the Viscounts Dillon.

The house and flanking pavilions.

The present house was built in 1722 for George Lee, 2nd Earl of Lichfield. The architect was James Gibbs and the builder was Francis Smith. William Kent and Henry Flitcroft designed the interiors.[13] The fireplaces are by Edward Stanton and his partner Christopher Horsnaile.[14] Ditchley Park is a Grade I listed building on the Historic England listing record.[13] Other listed structures proximate to the house, and which are designated Grade II, include the entrance screen, gates and balustrading to the forecourt,[15] steps and statuary to the north-west of the house,[16] the Lion Court, walled gardens and Lion Gate to the north-east,[17] the Stable Block,[18] and the gas house.[19]

The park is listed at Grade II* on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.[20] Listed features in the park include the Rotunda at Grade II*,[21] and the Little Temple,[22] the Lake Head and Grotto,[23] and the Lower House, all of which are designated Grade II.[24]

There are remains of a Roman villa on the Ditchley Park estate at Watts Wells, less than 1 mile (1.6 km) southeast of the house.[25] It was a colonnaded house with outbuildings, threshing floors, and a granary with capacity for the produce of about 1,000 acres (400 ha) of arable land.[26] It was surrounded by a rectangular ditch 360 yards (330 m) by 330 yards (300 m).[27] The site is less than 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the course of Akeman Street Roman road, and is one of a number of Roman villas and Romano-British farmsteads that have been identified in the area,[28] apparently associated with the territory bounded by Grim's Ditch.[29] The villa site was identified by aerial archaeology in 1934 and excavated in 1935.[30] It was found to have been first settled in about AD 70 with a set of timber-framed buildings, which were replaced in stone in the 2nd century.[30] In about AD 200 a fire severely damaged the stone buildings and the site was abandoned.[30] The site was reoccupied early in the 4th century, and occupation on a more modest scale than before continued until the end of that century.[30] Some time before the villa was discovered and excavated, a hoard of 1,176 bronze Roman coins was found between Box Wood and Out Wood, about 600 yards (550 m) to 700 yards (640 m) northeast of the villa site.[31] The coins range in date from about AD 270 onwards and seem to have been buried in a ceramic pot about AD 395, towards the end of the Roman occupation.[32] The hoard was transferred to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1935.[31]

Grim's Ditch, which passes through the present park and estate, is an ancient boundary believed to have been constructed during the Roman occupation of Britain in about the 1st century AD.[33] The toponym "Ditchley" is derived from a compound of two Old English words, meaning the woodland clearing ("-ley") on Grim's Ditch.

• 
  Ditchley House, side view, 1880
• 
  Main door of Ditchley House
• 
  Ditchley from the lake
• 
  Bust of Winston Churchill on the terrace

• Ditchley Foundation
• Noble Households – book with Ditchley Park inventories of 1743 and 1772

• Booth, Paul (1999). "Ralegh Radford and the Roman Villa at Ditchley: A Review". Oxoniensia. Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society. LXIV: 39–49.
• Brooks, Alan; Sherwood, Jennifer (2017). Oxfordshire. The Buildings Of England. New Haven, US and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-20930-3.
• Copeland, Tim (1988). "The North Oxfordshire Grim's Ditch: a Fieldwork Survey". Oxoniensia. Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society. LIII: 277–292.
• Emery, Frank (1974). The Oxfordshire Landscape. The Making of the English Landscape. London: Hodder & Stoughton. pp. 44, 124, 125, 127. ISBN 0-340-04301-6.
• Jenkins, Simon (2003). England's Thousand Best Houses. London, UK: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-7139-9596-1.
• Riley, D.N. (1943). "Archaeology from the Air in the Upper Thames Valley". Oxoniensia. Oxford Architectural and Historical Society. VIII–IX: 64–101.
• Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire. The Buildings of England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 572–576. ISBN 0-14-071045-0.
• Spens, Michael (1994). The Complete Landscape Designs and Gardens of Geoffrey Jellicoe. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-01596-4. OCLC 928039933.
• Sutherland, C.H.V. (1936). "A Late Roman Coin-Hoard from Kiddington, Oxon". Oxoniensia. Oxford Architectural and Historical Society. I: 70–80.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ditchley Park.

• Ditchley Foundation
• The Ditchley Foundation from the autobiography of Harry Hodson
• Ditchley House in Images of England – architectural details