The House

Rycote Park today is a harmonious amalgam of the restored remains of a Tudor mansion and 20th and 21st century additions by a succession of eminent architects. The Tudor house was probably built in the 1550s for Lord Williams of Thame . It was largely pulled down in 1807 to pay off the debts of his descendants , the Earls of Abingdon. What was left , after a century as a tenanted farmhouse, was in 1911 turned into a spacious Edwardian family home for Col Alfred St George Hamersley MP by the architects George Jack and William Weir. After his death, the house was bought in the 1930s by Cecil Michaelis, whose father had been a partner of Cecil Rhodes in South Africa. He further extend ed Rycote by occupying more of the old stable block, using the renowned architect Goodhart – Rendel.

In the 2000s Bernard and Sarah Taylor bought Rycote . The house by then had been subdivided into two houses, two cottages and an architects’ studio. With the help of Nicholas Thompson of Donald Insall Associates, they turned it back into one harmonious whole, invoking its glittering Tudor past but adding 21st century comfort.

In 2011, the Taylors commissioned the Bodleian Library to search their archives for material relating to Rycote: Rediscovering Rycote.