Home to the Stonor family for over 850 years, Stonor Park is one of the oldest family homes still lived in today – but it’s no museum. As the oldest member of the Stonor family, the house has a thousand stories to tell.
As well as being architecturally fascinating each room contains a lifetime of experience and anecdote. Discover art and treasures collected from across the globe and view historic maps and documents that reveal generations of service to the country. A stroll through this house is a vivid walk through history. Behind the warm red brick façade, Stonor is actually a collection of much older buildings. In fact its origins go back to Medieval times.
The area now housing our cosy Stonor Pantry cafe dates from the late 12th Century, with the Chapel added around a hundred years later. Since then a series of additions and renovations, including the adoption of the E-shape in around 1540 have evolved into the extraordinary building you can see and explore today. Highlights include the grand Gothic revival hall, atmospheric 17th century library and the dramatic long gallery opening on to beautiful Italianate gardens.
The fortunes of the house and chapel are strongly tied to the travails of the Catholics in Britain. When Henry VIII formed the Church of England in the 1530s Catholics, including the Stonor family were forced to take a much reduced part in public life. Crippling fines were levied and many were persecuted and forced to go into hiding.
At Stonor there is a poignant reminder of these times in the roof space and priest hole where Sir Edmund Campion hid whilst printing the famous Ten Reasons’ pamphlet in the 1580s.
