Stonor Park

Summary

A historic country house in the Chiltern Hills north of Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, ancestral home of the Stonor family (Barons Camoys) with a 12th-century private chapel, associated with Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion, used as a filming location for The Living Daylights (1987), Danny the Champion of the World (1989), One Foot in the Grave (2000), Endeavour (2019), and A Christmas Carol (BBC, 2019).

About this location

Stonor Park stands in a shallow valley in the Chiltern Hills approximately four miles north of Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, close to the Buckinghamshire boundary. The house has been the home of the Stonor family for more than eight centuries, an unusually long single-family tenure. The earliest part of the house dates from around 1280, when Sir Richard Stonor married his second wife and began the construction. The house was built in stages and now presents a varied elevation incorporating medieval, Tudor, and later elements. At its centre is a 12th-century private chapel built of flint and stone, retaining early brickwork in its tower. The contain the remains of a prehistoric stone circle.

The Stonor family’s steadfast Roman Catholicism through the Reformation and subsequent centuries led to their relative impoverishment and marginalisation, which inadvertently preserved the house in an unusually unaltered state. In 1581, the Jesuit priests Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons lived and worked at Stonor Park; Campion printed his tract Decem Rationes on a secret press here before government agents raided the house in August 1581. Campion escaped, but was arrested shortly after and executed. The family continued to permit Catholic worship at their private chapel throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The house contains family portraits, tapestries, bronzes, and ceramics; a walled Italianate garden rises on the hillside behind the main house; and a deer park with a herd of fallow deer surrounds the estate.

The Living Daylights (1987, directed by John Glen, starring Timothy Dalton as James Bond) used Stonor Park for location filming. Danny the Champion of the World (1989, directed by Gavin Millar, adapted from Roald Dahl’s novel, starring Jeremy Irons and Samuel Irons as father and son) filmed extensively at and around Stonor. The final episode of One Foot in the Grave (BBC, 2000, written by David Renwick, starring Richard Wilson as Victor Meldrew) filmed at the estate. Endeavour (ITV, 2019, starring Shaun Evans as the young Morse) used Stonor. A Christmas Carol (BBC/FX, 2019, written by Steven Knight, starring Guy Pearce as Ebenezer Scrooge) also filmed here.