Mapledurham House
| Mapledurham House | |
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| Location | Mapledurham, Oxfordshire, England |
| Coordinates | 51°29′5.28″N 1°2′7.80″W / 51.4848000°N 1.0355000°WCoordinates: 51°29′5.28″N 1°2′7.80″W / 51.4848000°N 1.0355000°W |
| Built | c.1585 |
| Governing body | Mapledurham Estate |
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Listed Building – Grade I
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| Official name: Mapledurham House | |
| Designated | 24 October 1951 |
| Reference no. | 1368944 |
 Location of Mapledurham House in Oxfordshire
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Mapledurham House is an Elizabethan stately home located in the civil parish of Mapledurham in the English county of Oxfordshire. It is a Grade I listed building, first listed on 24 October 1951.
The property was first held by Michael Blount and has remained in the Blount-Eyston family to this day. Building was started around 1585, at the time of the Spanish Armada, in the classic Elizabethan E-shape. It includes a late 18th century chapel built in the Strawberry Hill Gothic style for the recusant Roman Catholic owners of the house.
Prior to the Catholic Emancipation, the owners would hide priests in its priest holes, some of which were only discovered in the 21st century, and secretly celebrate Mass with a makeshift altar hidden inside a writing desk. The estate covers much of the village including Mapledurham Watermill and part of the church.
The poet Alexander Pope was a frequent visitor to the house as he was enamoured of two daughters of the Blount family. The house and surrounding village were used for the filming of the 1976 film of The Eagle Has Landed and also for several television series, including Midsomer Murders. It is also reputed to have been the inspiration for E. H. Shepard's illustrations of Toad Hall for Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, although this is also claimed by Hardwick House.
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