Braziers Park
Encyclopedia
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The house is owned and operated by a charitable trust
Charitable trust
A charitable trust is an irrevocable trust established for charitable purposes, and is a more specific term than "charitable organization".-United States:...
as a residential adult education
Adult education
Adult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults. Adult education takes place in the workplace, through 'extension' school or 'school of continuing education' . Other learning places include folk high schools, community colleges, and lifelong learning centers...
college, and centre for the School of Integrative Social Research.
History
Braziers Park was built in the late 17th century (with a datestone of 1688), and modelled in the Strawberry HillStrawberry Hill House
Strawberry Hill is the Gothic Revival villa of Horace Walpole which he built in the second half of the 18th century in what is now an affluent area of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in Twickenham, London...
Gothic
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...
style of architecture by Daniel Harris on behalf of Isaac George Manley (1755-1837) in 1799.
As a teenager, Manley had been a naval officer with Captain Cook on the first voyage of the Endurance
First voyage of James Cook
The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771...
1768-1771; and was later Vice Admiral of the Red, and as commander of “The Apollo” captured Legere, a French corvette
Corvette
A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...
in 1796. He became a Rear Admiral
Admiral
Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...
in 1809.
In 1839, Frances Eliza (Fanny) Grenfell (1814–1891), later a biographer, was living at Braziers Park with her sisters, and was visited by novelist Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...
(1819–1875), then a Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
undergraduate. Kingsley later fictionalized this meeting as that of Argemone with Lancelot Smith in his first novel Yeast (1848). Despite Fanny having taken a vow of chastity with her sisters at Braziers Park, she and Kingsley married in Bath in 1844.
Valentine Fleming
Valentine Fleming
Major Valentine Fleming, DSO was a British Conservative Member of Parliament who was killed in World War I.-Early years:...
, MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for South Oxfordshire
South Oxfordshire
South Oxfordshire is a local government district in Oxfordshire, England. Its council is based in Crowmarsh Gifford, just outside Wallingford....
, made substantial changes to the house when he bought it in 1906. His son Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
, the novelist, briefly lived at the house when very young.
Sir Ernest Moon (1854-1930), counsel to the Speaker of the House of Commons
Speaker of the British House of Commons
The Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, the United Kingdom's lower chamber of Parliament. The current Speaker is John Bercow, who was elected on 22 June 2009, following the resignation of Michael Martin...
, bought the house from Fleming in 1911, and his widow Lady Moon sold the house to Norman Glaister (1883-1961) in 1950.
Glaister set up the School of Integrative Social Research, which still exists at the site. Glaister had been involved in the Grith Fyrd
Grith Fyrd
Grith Fyrd was a radical alternative educational movement in England during the 1930s. It created two permanent work camps, one at Godshill in Hampshire and the other at Shining Cliff in Derbyshire, which took in unemployed men and tried to use them as a basis for creating a land-based...
barter for work system. The School, which in part functioned as a commune
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...
, aimed “to explore the dynamics of people living in groups, to develop better methods of interpersonal communication and to find new ways of combining knowledge to make it more meaningful.”
An important member of the community was Robert Glynn Faithfull (died 1996), who had met Glaister through the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry
Order of Woodcraft Chivalry
The Order of Woodcraft Chivalry is a Scouting-like movement operating in the United Kingdom, which was founded in 1916 by Ernest Westlake. Like Scouting, it was inspired by Ernest Seton's Seton Indians, and Seton was its honourary Grand Chieftain...
. Faithfull was an academic at the University of Liverpool
University of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...
who studied the Italian renaissance
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
and had been in British espionage during the Second World War. He was married to Baroness Eva Erisso, a former ballerina. Their daughter, the singer and actress Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....
, spent some of her early life in the community. Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
of the Rolling Stones came to stay with Marianne Faithfull at Braziers Park after his release from prison in 1967 as her then boyfriend. In her autobiography she described Braziers Park as a “mixture of high utopian thoughts and randy sex”.
Braziers Park today
Braziers Park is now home to around 20 people, some of whom live communally, and runs educational courses, many residential. In August 1996 the first of the annual Braziers International Artists' Workshop was held. It is the site of the annual WoodWood (festival)
Wood is an annual small early summer folk and roots music festival and environmental gathering, which takes place in Braziers Park, Ipsden near Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK. Its indepdendent organisers, Robin and Joe Bennett, also arrange the Truck Festival....
music festival that began in May 2008. August 2010 will see the first outing, (in conjunction with Braziers International Artists' Workshop) of the experimental Arts Festival SUPERNORMAL.
External links
51.55465°N 1.083068°W