Chastleton

House, village and modest provisions

Chastleton House stands on a gently undulating, north-facing hillside, with long views towards a distant valley, and it has changed very little in four hundred years. Walter Jones, a lawyer from an Oxfordshire wool-merchant family, bought the land in 1602 from the estate of Robert Catesby, pulled down the older house on the site, and built this one between 1607 and 1612 as a display of how well he had done. The National Trust owns it now and chose to repair and preserve it rather than restore it. The rooms are preserved with their worn, time-capsule character, and that is most of the reason to come.

The village itself is small — a loose line of stone cottages and houses along Village Road, stepping down towards Fox End and the Old School, with large gardens, orchards and fields behind them. Several springs rise nearby. The parish never had an alehouse of its own, and the last post-office shop closed in 1970. If you are staying here, Moreton-in-Marsh, four miles from the house, is the practical place to buy supplies.

What the house provides instead is modest. On most open days there is a second-hand bookshop, home-grown produce and plants for sale, and church teas laid on by the church and local charities rather than by the Trust.

Walking, gardens and Cavalier lore

The walking is the other reason to base yourself here. The Chastleton and Four Shires circuit is a five-mile loop from the National Trust car park, about two and a half hours over good tracks and field paths, with a few stiles and one rough stretch underfoot. Sturdy footwear helps. The Cotswold Voluntary Wardens who lead it suggest keeping the afternoon back for the house and gardens.

Those gardens hold the Best Garden, the Kitchen Garden, a Wilderness Walk and the croquet lawns, where Walter Whitmore-Jones codified the rules of croquet in 1866. A dovecote saved from a house pulled down opposite still stands as an eye-catcher. Dogs are welcome on leads in the car park, parkland, forecourt and stableyard, though only assistance dogs go into the house and garden.

Lore has it that Arthur Jones, known as the Cavalier, hid in the secret room above the porch after the Battle of Worcester in 1651, while his wife Sarah drugged the Roundhead soldiers searching the house. The family was fined for its loyalty and never quite recovered financially.

Preservation and the parish church

That thread of genteel poverty runs through the house's later life. During the Second World War it briefly held artwork evacuated from the Ashmolean in Oxford, then housed a boarding school. Barbara Clutton-Brock inherited in 1955 and, after her husband died, lived on in the cold and decaying house with a great many cats, doing the repairs herself, rewiring included. "Poverty is a great preservative," she said. The National Heritage Memorial Fund bought the house and much of its contents in 1991 and passed them to the National Trust, which spent six years stabilising it before it reopened.

The church of St Mary the Virgin sits close by, its oldest fabric late twelfth century. It has two arcade bays of about 1180, a tub font of the same age, medieval floor tiles and glass, and a pulpit scratched with the date 1623 and carved with pelicans. The porch-tower was rebuilt in 1689 after a fire said to have come from lightning.

Earlier history and nearby stops

The place is old well beyond the house. Domesday recorded it in 1086 split among eight owners, with a mill worth four shillings. South-east of the village, Chastleton Barrow is an Iron Age hillfort.

For dinner you go out. The Red Lion at Long Compton serves seasonal Cotswold food in a bar with high-backed settles and an inglenook fireplace: steak and Hook Norton pie, seared venison loin with Madeira jus, bang-bang cauliflower with coconut rice, and Mark's award-winning sourdough. The Rollright Stones, a Neolithic and Bronze Age complex of standing stones, are nearby.

Arriving and the open-day rhythm

By car the house is six miles from Stow-on-the-Wold, approached from the A436. Moreton-in-Marsh, four miles away, has the nearest station, and the Pulhams 801 links Chipping Norton, Stow, Bourton-on-the-Water and Cheltenham hourly through the day; the walk in from the nearest stop is a mile or so of lane, so check the arrangement before you rely on it.

On open days, when the house is open and the walkers come back down off the Four Shires loop, the church and the local charities put the kettle on. It is one of the few visitor provisions in the village, and on a good afternoon it is enough.