A Cotswold dream
CORNWELL Manor is one of the most admired Classical country houses in the Cotswolds. Half-hidden in a small valley close to Chipping Norton, the house commands attention on the approach, with terraced gardens and a parkland rolling away gently to the south-east towards a series of lakes. The diminutive church of St Peter’s, which is Norman in origin, can be glimpsed among the trees to the east and the house itself has evolved in stages from its medieval courtyard form. While the serene southern entrance elevation has a mid-Georgian character, the roof, courtyard and kitchen wing immediately suggest 16th- and 17th-century work. The combination of elements is highly satisfactory; the house was admired by Joseph Skelton in The Antiquities of Oxfordshire (1823), when he noted that the village had ‘little worthy of notice, excepting the handsome mansion and estate of the Penystone family’.
Cornwell Manor, home of the Ward family since 1959, was the seat of the Annesley family in the 16th century, and probably before that. The estate passed to Sir Thomas Penystone, 1st Bt, in the
