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Shotover Park (also called Shotover House) is an 18th-century country house and park near Wheatley, Oxfordshire, England. The house, garden and parkland are Grade I-listed with English Heritage, and 18 additional structures on the property are also listed. Shotover House, its gardens, parkland, and the wider estate (known as Shotover Estate) are privately owned by the Shotover Trust. Shotover Park, which lies on the north and east slopes of Shotover hill, should not be confused with the more recently named Shotover Country Park, which is a public park and nature reserve on the southwest slopes of Shotover hill managed by Oxford City Council. Shotover Country Park, Oxford City Council
Another alternative is the Old English Scoet Ofer ("upper spur"). Shotover Hill is located to the east of Oxford, which rises to above sea level. In the Domesday Book of 1068, the location was identified as Scotorne. Up through the 13th century, patent rolls of King John and Henry III refer to Shotover variously as Scotore, Shotore, Shothore, and Shottovere.
In 1613, following Prince Henry's death in 1612, King James confirmed the rangership by letters patent for the duration of the lives of Timothy Tyrrell and his two sons, Timothy Tyrrell (Master of the Buckhounds to King Charles I) and William. On 29 August 1624, King James knighted the elder Timothy Tyrrell at Shotover while attending a sporting hunt. He died in 1632.
Originally from Oakley, Buckinghamshire, the Tyrrell family grew extremely powerful in the 17th century. The royal forest in Oxfordshire extended over Headington, Marston, and parts of 10 other parishes. However, ongoing fighting among the local population, as well as trees felled by the Royalists during the English Civil War, caused the forest to fall into such disarray that in 1660 the woodland was disafforested – no longer subject to royal forest laws.
The Tyrrells lived in a house known as Shotover Lodge or Shotover House, although it is unknown if it was the same house visited by Queen Elizabeth or a different building. Historian and political theorist James Tyrrell, grandson of Sir Timothy the elder, grew up at Shotover before moving to Oakley in 1670 after his marriage. Tyrrell divided his time between Oakley and Shotover. Tyrrell was a close friend of John Locke, whom he met at Oxford in 1658. Locke was a frequent guest at Shotover in the late 1670s and early 1680s, and he stored papers and books there for safekeeping when he was forced to flee to Holland in 1683. Tyrrell eventually sold Oakley and moved back to Shotover after James II forced him out of local governance in Buckinghamshire for refusing to sign the Declaration of Indulgence in 1687.
The architect of the new house commissioned by Sir Timothy is uncertain, but Shotover Park is believed to have been designed by William Townsend (or Townesend; 1676–1739), an Oxford architect and mason who worked on many buildings at Oxford University, and who was the son of Mayor of Oxford John Townesend. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner wrote in the Oxfordshire edition of his Buildings of England series that Shotover Park has strong similarities with The Queen's College, Oxford, linking it to Townsend. Construction was likely completed by 1720; the date 1718 does appear on rainwater heads. The design of the elder James Tyrrell's Gothic temple has been attributed to Townsend or to James Gibbs.
Shotover Park was constructed of colour-washed limestone ashlar with a roof made of Westmorland and Welsh slate with stone stacks. The house is built to a double-depth plan, consisting of two storeys, plus a basement and attics. The initial house featured a seven-window front. In 1855, it was extended to 15-windows with two wings added on either side in a renovation by Joshua Sims. The Ionic order pedimented porch, the arched front doorway and flanking arched windows are likely from the mid-19th century additions. The windows on the ground and first floors feature floating , moulded and sills supported on consoles. Early outbuildings and features at Shotover Park included three stables, a coach house, a granary, a barn, dairy, work house, a brewhouse, gardener's cottage, several gardens and nurseries with young trees, and six small fishponds. The formal garden on the site dates to 1718, which includes a Grade I-listed walled kitchen garden. In addition to the Gothic temple built for Sir Timothy, the garden includes a large obelisk and another temple designed by William Kent circa 1735. The obelisk was built to honour the visit of Queen Elizabeth and stands on the site of the ancient house she visited. The Kent temple was badly damaged in the 1980s by falling trees, but it was restored in 1988 with assistance from the English Heritage.
James Tyrrell died in 1742 and left the estate to the family of his friend, the Baron Augustus Schütz, a Hanoverian favourite of King George I, who became Master of the Robes to King George II. It passed to his son, George Frederick Schutz, who was Groom of the Bedchamber to King George III, and in turn to his son, Thomas James Schutz.
When Thomas died, Shotover Park passed into the hands of the Drury family through his youngest sister Mary, who married Sir George Vandeput, 2nd Baronet. They left only one heir, a daughter Frances, who married Richard Vere Drury. Shotover passed to their son, George Vandeput Drury, who died without an heir in November 1849.
In 1850, George Gammie (later Gammie-Maitland) bought Shotover, reportedly with the proceeds of the sale of property he owned in Australia. (His business partner, William Gilbert Rees, named Shotover River in New Zealand for Gammie.) Gammie-Maitland went bankrupt in 1871, when the estate was sold to Colonel James Miller. It stayed in the Miller family until 2006, owned by Alfred Douglas Miller and his son Sir John Miller, Crown Equerry and friend of Queen Elizabeth II. The royal family were frequent visitors to the estate; Princess Anne suffered a broken nose falling off a horse while riding at Shotover at age 15.
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