Owlpen
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Owlpen is a village in Gloucestershire, England, set in a picturesque valley in the Cotswold hills. It is about one mile east of Uley, and three miles east of Dursley. The Owlpen valley is set around the village like an amphitheatre of wooded hills open to the west.
History
There are many signs of early settlement in the area. Round barrows and standing stones can be seen within a short walk of the manor. Uley Bury, a mile to the west, is an impressive multi-vallate, scarp-edge hill-fort of the middle iron age (300 B.C.), commanding spectacular views over the Severn Vale. Hetty Pegler's Tump is a well-preserved middle neolithic chambered long barrow of the Cotswold-Severn group (2,900-2,400 B.C.). The West Hill Romano-Celtic temple site was excavated 1977-9, with a shrine to the god Mercury.Owlpen (pronounced locally "Ole-pen") derives its name, it is thought, from the Saxon thegn, Olla, who first set up his 'pen', or enclosure, by the springs that rise under the foundations of the manor, about the ninth century.
There are records of the de Olepenne family, (who must have named themselves after the place) settled at Owlpen by 1174. They were local landowners, benefactors to abbeys and hospitals, henchmen to their feudal overlords, the Berkeleys of Berkeley castle, whose wills and charters they regularly attest.
In 1464 the male line failed after twelve generations of Olpennes and the manor and lands passed to the Daunt family on the marriage of Margery de Olepenne to John Daunt of Wotton-under-Edge in around 1464. The Daunts were clothiers who had been settled in Wotton since the 14th century. They later settled in Munster, Ireland, where by 1595 they had their principal estate at Gortigrenane Castle in county Cork.
The Owlpen manor house as it stands was largely built and rebuilt by Daunt family, between 1464 and 1616. Since then it has hardly been touched except for small improvements early in the eighteenth century, when the east wing of the manor, and the gardens, church and Grist Mill, were reordered by Thomas Daunt IV 1719-1726.
In the nineteenth century, the fortunes of the manor suffered when the Stoughton family inherited. They built a new mansion c. 1842, called Owlpen House, at the other end of the estate, a mile to the east, to the designs of S.S. Teulon.
Today the most obvious 19th Century accition is the Church of the Holy Cross which stands just above the manor house. It was restored by J.P. St Aubyn in 1876, with a richly-textured interior of mosaic and opus sectile tiles by Powells of the Whitefiars Glassworks, encaustic floor tiles by Godwin, and stained glass windows. It has been described as ‘the most elaborate Victorian interior in the Cotswolds’ (D. Verey).
By the end of the 19th century the old manor became celebrated as a Sleeping Beauty which had not been inhabited for nearly a hundred years, a picturesque ruin much decayed, overrun with ivy and dwarfed by enormous yews. There was concern for its survival and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings recommended that it should be vested in the National Trust, which however had no funds available for its repair.
Finally, in 1924-25the Owlpen estate was sold, by auction, for the first time in nearly a thousand years. The future of the manor house was assured when it was acquired and sensitively repaired by Norman Jewson, a distinguished Cotswold Arts and Crafts architect who had worked with Ernest Gimson and the brothers Sidney and Ernest Barnsley (who was his father-in-law) in Sapperton. He has described how he saved the ancient house from ruin in 1925–6 in his classic memoir, By Chance I did Rove (1963).
Owlpen today
Since 1974 Owlpen Manor has been the home of Nicholas and Karin Mander, who have carefully repaired the manor-house and outbuildings, with the cottages and estate, giving them a new and integrated life for the conditions of today. They have re-created the formal Stuart gardens in sympathy with the manor house and added representative family and Cotswold Arts and Crafts collections. The Mander family gave Wightwick Manor to the National Trust in 1937.The manor and gardens are a popular attraction which has been open to the public since 1966 from May to September. The historic cottages of the estate are available for holiday accommodation. There is also a restaurant in the medieval cyder house.
Quotes
- "The loveliest place in England" — Fodor's Britain Guide, 2002
- "The epitome of the English village" — HRH The Prince of Wales, A Vision of Britain, 1989
External links
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