Stonor Park - History

History

Stonor House has been the home of the Stonor family for more than eight centuries. In the house are displays of family portraits, tapestries, bronzes and ceramics. The house has a 12th century private chapel built of flint and stone, with an early brick tower.

The house was probably begun after 1280 when Sir Richard Stoner (1250–1314) married his second wife, Margaret Harnhull.

During and after the English Reformation the Stonor family and many other local gentry were recusants. In 1581 the Jesuit priests Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons lived and worked at Stonor Park, and Campion's Decem Rationes was printed here on a secret press. On 4 August 1581 a raid on the house found the press. Campion and Parsons had left a few days earlier, but the elderly Lady Cecily Stonor, her son John, the Jesuit priest William Hartley, the printers and four servants were taken prisoner, and in 1585 Hartley was exiled. Despite further prosecutions and fines the Stonors remained Roman Catholic throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and enabled many local villagers to remain Roman Catholic by allowing them to attend Mass at their private chapel. Between 1716 and 1756 John Talbot Stonor, Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District used Stonor Park as his headquarters.

The Stonor family's steadfast adherence to Roman Catholicism throughout the reformation led to their marginalization and relative impoverishment in subsequent centuries. This has inadvertently resulted in the preservation of the house in a relative unspoiled and unimproved state.