Clatercote Priory & Manor, Oxfordshire, England

Clattercote was included in 1086 in the Bishop of Lincoln's Cropredy manor, and was probably then in the bishop's own hand, for within eighty years Bishop Chesney granted demesne land there to the small Gilbertine Priory of St. Leonard of Clattercote. The estate was described as 2½ hides in 1216 and 3 hides in 1258–62.

The priory was dissolved in 1538 and in the same year CLATTERCOTE manor with the priory's house and site and possessions, including lands in Cropredy, Claydon, Wardington, and Mollington, was granted by Henry VIII in tail male as 1/20 knight's fee to Sir William Petre and his first wife Gertrude; Gertrude died in 1541 without male issue, and in 1544 Petre, then King's Secretary, therefore obtained a grant in fee of the reversion of Clattercote. In 1546 Petre surrendered the manor to the Crown in exchange for property elsewhere. Henry granted Clattercote to the new foundation of Christ Church, Oxford, which in 1551 granted it in fee-farm to Thomas Lee and his wife Mary, with successive remainders in tail to Lee's sister Anne and others; Christ Church still received the fee-farm rent in 1969.Lee died childless in 1572, when his heir was William Watson, the son of his deceased sister Anne. Lee's relict held Clattercote for her life, and married as her second husband Richard Corbet of Moreton Corbet (Salop.). In 1582 Corbet bought the reversion of the estate held by Watson; he died seised of the estate and without issue in 1606.He had married as his second wife Judith Austen, then already twice widowed, and by his will settled Clattercote on her for life. In 1611 Judith bought the manor outright from her husband's brother Sir Vincent and his nephew Andrew, her son-in-law. She died in 1640 and was succeeded in uneasy possession of Clattercote by Henry Boothby (d. 1648), the second surviving son of her first marriage to William Boothby, citizen and haberdasher of London; but Judith seems to have made contradictory settlements of Clattercote, one of 1631 (repeated in her will) in favour of Henry, and an earlier one of 1618 in favour of his elder brother Thomas Boothby of Tooley Park (Leics.). A Chancery suit and counter-suit resulted in 1651 in the award of Clattercote to Thomas (d. 1651). Thomas's son, also Thomas, in 1674 sold the property to John Cartwright of Aynho (Northants.), who was given security against the claims of Henry Boothby's descendants. Cartwright's descendants held Clattercote for almost 250 years, until Sir Fairfax (Leighton) Cartwright sold the Priory estate in 1922 to Mr. H. B. Burnham. The latter's representatives sold it in 1945 to Mr. J. W. Hillier, the owner in 1969.