Shotover House, Oxfordshire, England

Until 1775, when the new turnpike was constructed, the main Oxford-London road traversed Shotover Plain and brought the parish some notoriety as well as several distinguished visitors. Queen Elizabeth, for instance, arrived at Shotover Lodge after her visit to Oxford in 1566, and in 1624 Charles I stayed there and knighted his host Timothy Tyrrell the elder. Others of note were met at the foot of Shotover on their way to Oxford. The Moroccan ambassador was so welcomed by the scholars of Oxford in 1682, having stopped at Shotover House on the way , and in 1711 all the coaches of Oxford and 400 or 500 horse met Dr. Atterbury, the new Dean of Christ Church, at Shotover hill. The flying coach first travelled from Oxford to London in one day in 1669, and thereafter much is heard of bills for repairs of the highway. The bill was £35 5s. for the years 1687–9, and £85 in 1690; and improvements done in 1688 without orders led to a long struggle for payment. Highwaymen also frequented the old road, as John Wesley discovered in 1737. After 1775 the old road fell into comparative disuse. It is now unmetalled where it passes over Shotover Plain and is hardly used by cars except in summer. The spot where it used to cross into Wheatley parish by a ford across the stream is marked by an old mounting-block.

Shotover House lies to the north side of the ridge, and away from the present residential community. In the medieval period a house, probably on or near the present site, was the residence of the bailiff of the forest. It was repaired in 1598 and was reported to need repair again in 1640. Sir Timothy Tyrrell and his son Timothy Tyrrell the younger rebuilt the house. In 1665 Timothy the younger stated that he had spent nearly £2,000 on building and inclosures, and a survey of 1660 mentions two piles of buildings as the work of the father and son.

The largest of these piles is of freestone 47 foot long and 26 in breadth, and contains upon the first story a small porche and wainscoted hall and a verry faire parlour or dyning roome, the second story 3 faire lodging roomes over which are as many garretts, and under this pile is one sellar and pantries, a kitchen and buttrie (this fronts to the west). The second pile being of wood and playster contains 2 lower rooms upon the lower floor, 3 small ones upon the second and 3 garretts overhead, and is 40 foot in length and 24 in breadth (this to the south).

There was also a brewhouse, three stables, a barn, dairy, work-house, granary, coach-house, several gardens and nurseries stored with young trees, and six small fishponds. Evelyn visited the mansion in 1675, found it 'a sweete place', and commended Sir Timothy's plantation of oaks and other timber.

Sir James Tyrrell, the next owner, was responsible for another rebuilding. He died in 1718 and desired that it should be inscribed on his tomb that he 'built the house at Shotover and made the gardens there'. The architect may have been William Townsend. General James Tyrrell (1718–42) decorated the interior of the house, and Augustus Schutz, who followed Tyrrell, worked on the gardens 'every year making openings to an extensive country not before altogether excluded'. Wings to the house, built by Joshua Sims, were added after 1854.

As it now stands, and mainly as rebuilt in the early 18th century, the house is large with seven bays and rusticated pilasters at the corners and an entablature over the first floor. The three central bays project slightly beneath a roof of Westmorland slate. The stone is from the Haseley quarries and not from Headington as might be expected. The position of the house, built on the side of the hill, allows the state rooms to be approached from the front as if they were on the ground floor. In the days of Schutz and Drury there was a chapel adjoining the portico. Its ornamental details have perished except for two scalloped niches. It was converted into a kitchen in the mid-19th century. There is a two-storied stable of rubble, built with squared quoins; it has moulded eaves, and a tiled roof with a central wooden cupola with arched openings and leaded roof with ball finials.

In the gardens an avenue on the west leads from an octagonal pond to a square stone obelisk with spiked iron ball finial. A cross-walk, called Cathedral Walk because of the interlacing branches overhead, approaches an octagonal temple with a shallow plaster dome, standing on the highest point in the park, and commanding a view of the Chilterns on the east. Both this temple and the obelisk were designed by William Kent, though his design for the obelisk was altered, perhaps by Sir James Tyrrell himself. On the east a lawn slopes to a tree-lined canal, terminated by a Gothic temple of three arches surmounted by a battlemented pediment with finial.