Chastleton House

Chastleton House (/ˈtʃæsəltən.haʊs/) is a Jacobean country house situated at Chastleton near Moreton-in-Marsh, Oxfordshire, England (grid reference SP2429). It has been owned by the National Trust since 1991 and is a Grade I listed building.

Chastleton House was built between 1607 and 1612, for Walter Jones, who had made his fortune from the law, although his family were originally Welsh wool merchants. The estate was bought in 1604 from Robert Catesby, although his residence was demolished to make way for the new house and no traces of the original building on this spot remain. The house is built of Cotswold stone, round a small courtyard, called the Dairy Court.

Chastleton House is famous for an episode from the Civil War in which a loyal wife duped (and drugged) Roundhead soldiers to save her husband. Sarah Jewell, granddaughter of the last owners of manor, recalls her childhood reenactments of the scene:

"My sisters and I used to love running around searching for the secret room where Arthur Jones, the grandson of Walter Jones, hid after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Arthur was a Royalist and had been fighting for Charles II but the troops were defeated by Cromwell and Arthur galloped back to Chastleton with Cromwell's soldiers in hot pursuit. His quick-witted wife, Sarah - my childhood heroine - hid him in the secret closet over the porch and although the pursuing soldiers found his exhausted horse in the stables they couldn't find him. Sarah saved Arthur's life by lacing the soldiers' beer with laudanum and saddling up one of their horses for his escape as the soldiers slumbered. My sisters and I used to lie on the bed in the secret room and pretend we could hear the horses galloping towards us. The bed has now gone and the entrance to the room is barred with one of the National Trust's trademarks: a rope."

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