Great Tew

Viscount Cary lived in a large manor house that seems to have been built in or before the early part of the 17th century and extended in the latter part. It was demolished in about 1800, but surviving adjacent structures from about 1700 include stables, a dovecote and a stone gate piers.

In 1780 and 1793 Great Tew estate was bought by George Stratton, who had made a fortune in the East India Company. He died in March 1800 and was succeeded by his son George Frederick Stratton. The manor house had evidently fallen into disrepair, as the Strattons lived in a smaller Georgian dower house slightly to the south of it, and had the manor house demolished in about 1803. In 1808 George Frederick Stratton engaged the Scots botanist and garden designer John Loudon, who laid out north and south drives in Great Tew Park and planted ornamental trees in and around the village, which still enhance its appearance.[4]

In 1815–1816, Matthew Robinson Boulton, son of the manufacturer Matthew Boulton of Soho, Birmingham, bought the estate. In 1834 he added a Gothic Revival library to the east end of the house, and in 1856 his family added to the west end a Tudor style section designed by F.S. Waller.[9][10] Great Tew stayed with the family until M. E. Boulton died without heirs in 1914.[4] In 2014, the house seemed unoccupied and clad in scaffolding and plastic sheeting, as a restoration project for the owners, the Johnston family,[11] who reopened the local ironstone quarry in 2000.[12]

In recent years the Great Tew Estate has hosted events through the year, including the Cornbury Music Festival.[13]

Great Tew is said to have had two watermills by the 13th century. Both were still in use when the estate was surveyed in 1778.[4] Mill Lane, about 600 yards (550 m) north of the village, is named after a mill built or rebuilt in the 17th century for wool processing.[19] Traces of its mill pond, mill stream and wheel chamber were still visible in the early 1980s.[19] About 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the village, there was a mill on the stream near Cottenham Farm.[19] Traces of its mill ponds, buildings and two water wheels were still visible in the early 1980s,[19] and a small wood there is still called Pool Spinney. One mill had ceased to be used by the time G. F. Stratton sold the estate in 1815; the other was disused by 1837.[4]

One of J. C. Loudon's works for G. F. Stratton after 1808 was an elaborate watermill at Tracey Farm in the south of the parish.[20] It was a bone mill, because the British Agricultural Revolution had identified lime as a fertiliser and bone meal as a source of it.[20] The stream at Tracey Farm was dammed in a mill pond, and both the leat feeding the water wheel and the tail race downstream of it were in brick-lined tunnels, the latter 20 feet (6 m) below ground.[20] While most Oxfordshire watermills have an undershot or a breastshot wheel, Loudon adopted a more efficient backshot wheel made of wood and iron and 16 feet (5 m) in diameter.[20] A sawmill powered by a beam engine was built in the middle of the 19th century. The beam engine has gone but the engine house and its tall chimney survive.

One of the thatched cottages in Brook Road

Many dwellings in the village seem to have been built in the 17th century during the Great Rebuilding of England.[21] Given the Tanfields' behaviour towards the villagers, they are more likely to have been built in the decades when the Cary family had the estate. Every cottage and house is built of local ironstone from Great Tew's quarry, and most have thatched roofs.

Matthew Robinson Boulton had most of the village's old cottages and houses rebuilt and embellished from 1819 onwards.

After M. E. Boulton's death in 1914 Great Tew estate was held in public trusteeship for nearly 50 years, during which time many of its historic cottages and houses were unoccupied and allowed to become derelict. In 1962 Major Eustace Robb, only son of Major-General Sir Frederick Spencer Robb, inherited the estate and declared he would restore its prosperity and buildings.[22] However, a decade later many cottages were continuing to decay and Jennifer Sherwood and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner condemned this as "one of the most depressing sights in the whole county. Terraces of cottages lie derelict (1972) and will soon be beyond hope of restoration. A scheme of gradual rehabilitation is said to be in progress, but nothing has been done meanwhile to prevent the decay of unused cottages, some of which are completely ruinous and will need to be entirely rebuilt."[23]

A cottage standing derelict in 1980

In 1978 another authority described Major Robb's treatment of Great Tew as a "notorious example" that "demonstrated that a single-minded or neglectful owner can still cause both the community and the village fabric to die."[24] Also in 1978, Great Tew village was declared a conservation area. In 1985 Major Robb died, leaving Great Tew estate to the Johnston family, who have worked on restoration. In 2000 they reopened Great Tew's quarry to supply ironstone for building.[25]

Many of the cottages are Grade II listed buildings. One pair of 17th-century cottages, 57 and 58 The Lane, are Grade II* listed.[26]

Great Tew County Primary School, built in 1852

In the 17th century, Lettice Cary, wife of the 2nd Viscount Falkland, cared for the poor and sick of Great Tew and founded a village school. The village still had a school in the 18th century, but a schoolroom attached to the church was disused by 1738 and demolished later in that century. A school had been re-established by 1774; its building was enlarged in 1815. In 1818, the village also had two dame schools.

In 1852 M. R. Boulton moved the primary school to a new building on the village green.[27] In 1923 this was enlarged to take extra pupils from Little Tew. It has three classrooms for pupils in classes of mixed age and ability. It is a county primary school run by Oxfordshire County Council.[28]

The Falkland Arms public house