Chastleton

Chastleton is a small hamlet on the Oxfordshire-Gloucestershire border, dominated by Chastleton House — one of the finest and most authentically preserved Jacobean country houses in England. Built between 1607 and 1612 for Walter Jones, a wool merchant from Witney, the house has remained almost unchanged since the seventeenth century. Its rooms still contain the original furniture, textiles and fittings in various stages of genteel dilapidation, and the National Trust, which acquired it in 1991, maintains a deliberate policy of conservation rather than restoration.

The result is a house that feels genuinely inhabited by its history in a way that more thoroughly restored properties rarely achieve. The great chamber, the gallery, the secret room and the topiary garden all carry an air of faded grandeur that is both melancholy and entirely compelling. Chastleton has the additional distinction of being where the rules of croquet were codified in 1865 — a committee met here to agree the formal game rules still used today.

The surrounding countryside at the northern edge of the Cotswolds is gently rolling and relatively unspoiled. The Rollright Stones, a Bronze Age stone circle of considerable archaeological significance, lie a mile to the north near Long Compton, providing an interesting contrast to the Jacobean house. Chipping Norton is the nearest town and Moreton-in-Marsh is within easy reach.