(The words below are taken from the Guide to
Waterperry Gardens, Jan. 1998 edition.)
Waterperry Church
The little parish church of St Mary the
Virgin is just beside the big house as though to ensure that
squires of Waterperry would not arrive late at the large family
pew. Its exterior is
plain, thoiugh the wooden tower supported internally on oak beams
is unusual; the interior is a delight.
Few small churches can boast such an array of
ancient glass, extending over four centuries, the
thirteenth-century lancets, recently and lovingly restored, being
the most precious possession.
Students of church architecture can trace its
development here, beginning with the unusual sight of two chancel
arches, Saxon above Norman.
The families of FitzElys, Curson and Henley dominate the
building in effigy and memorial in glass and stone, and in a rare
palimsest brass, an example of mediaeval thrift.
The FitzElys effigy underneath its beautiful
canopy, is one of the finest examples of English
mid-fourteenth-century sculpture in the country, which is far
superior to an example from the same London workshop prominently
disp[layed in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Other treasures include a Jacobean
three-decker pulpit and box-pew.
(Guide to Waterperry Gardens, Jan. 1998)
Waterperry House
A manor house has almost certainly existed at
Waterperry on the same site since before 1086, and was occupied by
the FitzElys family as lords of this prosperous mediaeval manor.
The present house dates back to the ate twelfth-century –
thick rubble walls in an L-shape which now constitute the kitchen
at the back. Since
then the house has been extended and altered, probably in the late
fifteenth-century by the Cursons.
Walter Curson was the third son of the Curson
family at Kedleston, an entrepreneur who bought Waterperry and
introduced the practice of enclosure.
The village became very poor, though the Curson fortune
appears to have prospered.
After the reformation the Curson family
remained Catholics, and Waterperry became the missionary center
for Oxfordshire for 200 years. During the recusancy period they
harboured a Jesuit priest, Sir Edward Walpole, and would have had
a house complete with chapel and priest holes in the
fifteenth-century.
In about 1689 the Cursons extended the house,
the wing adjacent to the churchyard, and in 1713 Sir John Curson
began the building of a ‘modern house’ at the front, around
the existing building.
In 1790 the Cursons enclosed the churchyard
with a high wall, rehousing the vicar further down the village and
converting all remaining buildings to stables, barns and garden
features. In the regency period they let land to tenant farmers, and
Henry Roper Curson was forced to lease and later to sell
the estate to cover his gambling losses.
The Henleys became the new owners and renovated the house
in 1813, replacing much wood with ships masts and other timber,
available through their shipping business.
The exterior remained unaltered, and until
1900 the estate was prosperous and ffficiently organised on the
basis of tenant farming. A
dairy was built, a ram pump for drawing water installed, and
amenities such as the earth close introduced.
The Henleys were the last family to own the
house. In 1925 the
whole estate was sold to Magdalen College, and the House was let
to Mrs O’Connor, and her son – a general of renown in World
War II – and later in 1932 to Miss Havergal, who finally bought
the estate in 1948. She established the famous Waterperry School
of Horticulture, and laid the foundation of the gardens as we see
today.
When she retired in 1971, and the
Horticultural School was closed, the property was acquired by the
School of Economic Science who run residential courses for its
students of philosophy and economics.
(Guide to Waterperry Gardens, Jan. 1998)
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