Cogges Manor Farm Museum

Cogges Manor Farm is a one-time working farm in Cogges near Witney in Oxfordshire, now a heritage centre operated by a charitable trust and open to the public. Its aim is to give visitors an insight into farm life, and how the food they eat is husbanded or cultivated. Additionally it provides workshops for school children and adults about food production, local history, horticulture and rural arts and crafts. The grounds and the medieval barns are used for traditional festivals, theatrical performances and private functions.

It also serves the community as a recreational facility where families can meet and feed the animals, enjoy the ambience of the farmyard, the orchard and a traditional walled vegetable garden, and wander around the woodland site of a disused moat on the banks of the Windrush.

Though close to the busy centre of Witney, the Farm is surrounded by common land and pasture, giving it a remarkably rural feel.

Though not geographically in the Cotswolds the buildings of the Farm and the older parts of Witney have many of the characteristics of a Cotswold settlement. It lies within the boundary of the ancient Royal Hunting Forest of Wychwood.

The original Manor House was a Cotswold stone building dating from the middle of the 13th century. It originally comprised four ranges built around a courtyard. Of these the 13th century kitchen and part of the hall survive from one range and the dairy incorporates remains of one of the other ranges. The other two ranges have been lost, but traces or foundations of both of them survive. In the 13th century the Manor had a large fishpond, but since 1984 part of the site of the pond has been covered by modern houses.

The manor house was probably built after Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York bought part of the manor of Cogges in AD 1241. In 1242 the house was described as the Archbishop's Court. By 1245 the Archbishop had given Cogges Manor to his nephew Sir Robert de Grey, with whose heirs the house remained until 1485. More than once in its history the family used the house as a dower house for the widows of successive Barons Grey of Rotherfield.

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Wikipedia