Manor
Tackley has existed since Saxon times. After the Norman Conquest of England William the Conqueror granted the manor of Tackley to Hugh d'Avranches, 1st Earl of Chester.
The Manor House was built in 1657 and Tackley Park, also known as Hill Court, was built late in the 17th century, later becoming the English seat of the baronet and Barbados sugar planter Sir Philip Gibbes (1731–1815). Both houses have been demolished but their outbuildings, including a thatched barn and two dovecotes, remain.
Another 17th century house, Court Farm (or Base Court), still survives but its interior was completely remodelled in the 1950s. Court Farm is near the site of a 12th century moated house, and has a set of 17th century fish ponds, constructed by John Harborne (1582–1651), a wealthy merchant from the Middle Temple who purchased the manor of Tackley in 1612, and had embarked on creating there a new mansion with an elaborate water garden. The remains of one square and two triangular ponds, no doubt originally containing fish, are visible today. The manor lay on a tributary of the River Cherwell, and Harborne may well have been a fisherman. He was a friend of the publisher John Jackson, who published in 1623 a plan of Harborne's water garden in its completed state, by Gervase Markham in the third edition of his Cheape and good husbandry for the well-ordering of all beasts, and fowles, and for the generall cure of their diseases.
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