Shotover
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Shotover is a hill and forest in Oxfordshire, now just east of the townscape of Oxford. It is also a historical parish, in which stands a grand country house, Shotover Park. On the flank of the hill is Shotover Country Park.
Shotover Hill is three miles east of Oxford. Its highest point is 557 feet above sea level.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Shotover was a royal forest. The timber for many of Oxford’s historic buildings came from here. In 1660 however Shotover ceased to be a Royal Forest and became open farmland which was grazed or cultivated. The remaining wooded forest is part of the Shotover estate but is maintained by the city council as Shotover Country Park.
- Location map: 51°44’58"N, 1°10’54"W
Shotover parish
The name 'Shotover' is from the Old English language; perhaps from sceot ofer, meaning "steep slope" or perhaps more likely 'woodland slope'. Shotover was part of the Wychwood royal forest[1] from around the period of the Domesday Book until 1660.
A hill figure is recorded as having once been carved on the hill. Antiquarian John Aubrey writes:
- "On Shotover Hill [near Oxford] was heretofore (not long before the Civil Wars, in the memory of man) the effigies of a Giant cut in the earth, as the White Horse by Ashbury Park"[2]
Shotover Road
The road between London and Oxford used to pass over the top of Shotover Hill. The road was made into a turnpike under the 1719 Stokenchurch Turnpike Act.
Shotover Park
- Main article: Shotover Park
Shotover Park and garden were begun in about 1714 for James Tyrrell of Oakley. Tyrell died in 1718 and the house was completed by his son, General James Tyrell. There is no known record of the name of the architect. In 1855 the architect Joshua Sims added two wings in the same style of the original part of the house.[1]
The garden was begun in 1718 and completed in 1730. It is a rare survivor of formal gardens of this period, laid out along an east–west axis 1,200 yards long. The centrepiece of the garden east of the house is a straight canal, ending with a Gothic Revival folly. The architect of the folly is unknown, but if it was built before 1742 it may be one of the earliest examples of the Gothic Revival. The garden west of the house has a similarly long vista, ending with an octagonal temple designed in the 1730s by William Kent.[1]
Outside links
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire, 1974 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09639-2pages 763–765
- ↑ Crawford, O. G. S. (September 1929). "The Giant of Cerne and other Hill-figures". Antiquity 3 (11): 277–282. Refers to John Aubrey's Monumenta Britannica, unpublished manuscript in the Bodleian, part 2, folio 242b
- A History of the County of Oxford - [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol5 Volume 5 : Parishes: Shotover - Bullingdon Hundred (Victoria County History)]
- Roberts, Edward (1963). "The Boundary and Woodlands of Shotover Forest circa 1298". Oxoniensia (Oxford Architectural and Historical Society) XXVIII: 68–73. http://oxoniensia.org/volumes/1963/roberts.pdf.