Oxhey Hall

Then

Historic England dates Oxhey Hall to the early 1500s and suggests it may have been a hunting lodge or a range of lodgings, one wing of a once larger house. It keeps a richly carved 16th-century oak ceiling of 16 panels. The scheduling text for its dry moat repeats a story that Henry VIII hunted from here, but gives no evidence. The house was extended in the early 1600s, and a timber barn of around 1700 stands nearby. Remodelled around 1870, it was one of the four farms offered for sale in 1872, with 258 acres. The sale papers called it "a capital farm residence", partly moated and lately enlarged, and singled out its carved drawing-room ceiling. In 1924 some of its land was sold along with Oxhey Lodge Farm, and part of the land sold became the Oxhey Hall estate of the 1930s. In the Second World War the farmhouse held the Lucy Gaster Children's Home, which took in displaced and refugee children. Memories of the home differ sharply. One woman sent there as an infant remembers kindness, while another former child remembers a brutal place.^{18,20,82,103,178,179,186,283,285,286}

Now

The one farmhouse of the old estate to survive, it still stands on Hampermill Lane. It has been listed Grade II* since 1985, and its moat has been a scheduled monument since 1992. The barn, listed Grade II, and the other old farm buildings are now one house, which its architects say won a RIBA East award for 2020 to 2021.

Mentioned in

• Oxhey Place: How the northern farms left the family Before the Estate
• Oxhey Golf Club: The Second World War Before the Estate
• Farms and fields: Oxhey Hall Before the Estate
• Farms and fields: Oxhey Lodge and Oxhey Warren Before the Estate
• Farms and fields: The estate in 1872 Before the Estate
• Farms and fields: The field names Before the Estate
• Farms and fields: Oxhey Bridge Farm and Broadfields Before the Estate
• Oxhey Hall and the north side Walk
• Walks Visit

Position from OpenStreetMap. See Sources and method.