Saving Stonor
Above:
Above: chapel
Above: Stonor 4- Tim 121
Above: Waddesdon Manor2
Above: 8 - Stonor Park - Oxon - C Tony Hyde copy
Stonor Park, a hugely imposing building of warm brick that nestles in a chalk fold of the Chiltern Hills, is one of those rare breeds of stately homes that has been owned and lived in, cherished and altered by the same family for over 800 years.
This Easter marks 30 years since the current Lord and Lady Camoys opened it to the public and saved it from being sold off into private ownership, or, worse still, demolished, like so many beautiful country houses in the immediate decades after the Second World War.
By the 1970s the house had fallen into a sad state of repair, even though his father had done approximately 40 per cent of the required repairs. Years of neglect, due to financial constraints, had taken their toll on the fabric of the building and on the estate, and the sixth Lord Camoys, the father of the current lord, reluctantly put the house up for sale, along with many of the family portraits, papers and heirlooms.
“It saddened me deeply,” recalls the present Lord Camoys. “The sad fact is that my parents did not think financially. The house had been in the family for such a long time, since 1150 at least, and together the family, the portraits and the papers told a story and as long as everything remained together the story was alive. I was very worried that if you parted these three elements then you destroyed the whole story.”
Then, very suddenly in 1976, the sixth Lord Camoys died with the property still on the market. The future looked bleak, but rather than allow the family seat to be lost forever, the present lord decided to take drastic action. “I felt if I could save the house, then I should,” he says.
At the time he was Chief Executive of Barclays Merchant Bank, living in Suffolk, but he decided that if the house were to remain in tact he would have to buy it himself on the open market and that is exactly what he did, putting it in trust for his son William.
Even before he and Lady Camoys, together with their four children, moved into the house, they set about transforming the property and preparing to open it to the public with the help of other family members.
“We moved in the summer of 1978 and the house was opened the next Easter. We worked very hard to get it ready. We all contributed to the guide book and hung pictures and placed the furniture we brought with us,” recalls Lord Camoys.
Indeed many of the family portraits were also brought back on the open market, although the majority had been left to William in his grandfather’s will. Indeed, one portrait was tracked down in America and returned to its rightful place only last year. But all of the furnishings were sold.
“When we arrived there was a kitchen table,” smiles Lord Camoys. Consequently, the family not only had to work on the fabric of the house, but also furnish it from scratch.
Some of the pieces were already ion the possession of other family members. The extraordinary shell-shaped bed in Francis Stonor’s Bedroom, for example, was seen by the eponymous owner in a film the original “Moulin Rouge.” “He fell in love with it, tracked it down and bought it,” says Lord Camoys, who inherited it, along with the chest of drawers in the same design.
The Stonors, however, are perhaps best known, for being one of the most prominent Catholic families in England. Hiding well-known and wanted Catholic priests - including Edmund Campion – in a secret room was politically perhaps not the wisest of moves in 1581 when so many “Papists” were martyred for their beliefs. It was here that the seminaries operated a printing press and a raid on the house resulted in the arrest of John Stonor and his mother.
Thankfully they escaped execution, but for the next two and a half centuries, until Catholic Emancipation, the family was forced to take a back seat in public life, while still remaining loyal to the Catholic faith.
Not surprisingly the Chapel is central to the estate and was built on the site of a much earlier one near a pagan stone circle, (hence the name Stonor, meaning stone hill) but was substantially altered in the late 18th century. Dame Edith Sitwell regularly attended mass, as did Paul Getty, and Graham Greene donated the Stations of the Cross, carved by a Polish prisoner of war out of Red Cross packing cases.
Other fascinating pieces of interest include Kneller portraits, a Tinteretto and many original volumes of catholic books, many printed illegally, in the library.
As Lord Camoys is keen to point out, however: “So many people say what they like most about Stonor is that it is not just a museum, but a family home.”
Although his parents had carried out a good deal of restoration work on the house and chapel before he took over the running of Stonor, there is always work to be done and the upkeep has to be constant. Having to buy back what is rightfully yours to inherit must have been hard, but Lord Camoys has no regrets. “We’ve kept everything together and we’ve kept it alive,” he says.
So the story is set to run and run, hopefully for another 850 years. You could say it’s never-ending.
Stonor Park, Henley-on-Thames,
RG9 6HF. Tel 01491-638587, www.stonor.com
What do you want to do next