The Bishop's Manor House or 'Palace' and Mount House

Situation
In the grounds of Mount House, just east of St Mary's Church, to the south of Church Green in the centre of Witney.

History
The 'Bishops Palace', which is situated in the grounds of Mount House just east of St Mary's Church, has been so-called only since the 18th century and should perhaps more properly be known as a manor house. It was the working centre of a large estate owned by the Bishops of Winchester from 1044 and may have been one important reason why the woollen industry developed at Witney.

A series of excavations from 1984-1992 revealed some of the foundations of this Medieval building. These are open to the public for viewing and are now protected from the elements by a tent-like structure. Next to this stands Mount House, which was a grand domestic building built very close to the site of the Medieval manor house in the early 20th century.

The archaeological excavations revealed a series of stone buildings that formed one of the earliest and largest manors of its type. The first building appears to be a 'solar' tower of the early 12th century, which would have symbolised the bishops' wealth and power. A chapel was added in the mid-12th century, followed by a large hall and other buildings. These buildings were arranged around a courtyard and surrounded by a wall and moat. The estate was large but it lay a long way off from Winchester so its grand style was probably influenced by the fact that the royal palace at Woodstock was only eight miles away; the bishops would have been anxious to impress their royal neighbours with their own wealth and status [1]. King John came on several visits to Witney between 1207 and 1214. Henry III also came to stay with Bishop Peter des Roches in 1221 and spent £20 on new clothes, a large sum of money at that time [2]. The whole estate would have been managed on behalf of the bishops, who enjoyed the income but would have visited only occasionally. The bishops did, however, take a keen interest in their investment and the town of Witney really started to grow as a result of planned development by Bishop Peter des Roches in the early 13th century. He laid out the market place and the house plots on either side of it. Mills were also an important part of this estate and by 1245 there were four corn mills and three fulling mills, which together earned the bishop more than half as much again as all the other rents of the estate [3, 4].

The Black Death in 1348 caused the death of two-thirds of the inhabitants of the estate and this, together with a longer-term general population decline, made sheep farming much more profitable. This was because sheep needed far fewer people to tend them compared to crops, which were much more labour intensive. So from the 14th century local agriculture became much more focussed on wool production and Witney became an important collection centre and store for wool, which was brought in from some of the bishops' other local estates [5, 6]. Between the Black Death in 1348 and the end of the century the number of sheep kept by the Bishops doubled. In Bishop Orleton's time (1334-45) there were 700-800 sheep known to be at Witney, rising to 1043 under Bishop Edington (1346-66). In 1382 it was recorded that a total of 1100 sheep were shorn there and 1500 fleeces were brought in from the bishops other estates, with local people being employed to pluck, sort and clean the wool [7].

The bishops and royalty frequently visited the manor house in the early 13th century, but these visits gradually died out. The last visit by a bishop was probably in the late 15th century. By 1453 the bishops had largely given up their interests in sheep farming which allowed local farmers and merchants to enter into the trade [8].

The Duke of Marlborough leased the estate from the bishops in 1751 and sub-let it to various people, including the Dolley family, local blanket makers. The house was let to James Gray in 1757, a solicitor who had also been clerk to the Company of Witney Blanket Weavers; it was probably he, who in rebuilding it demolished the remaining medieval buildings and changed the name to Mount House.

Mount House was let to the Early blanket making family for most of the later 19th century, but in 1905 James Marriott (owner of the adjacent Mount Mills blanket factory) bought it and seems to have been responsible for rebuilding it once again [9]. During the 20th century it was the private residence of another blanket maker, Richard Early, before being sold to Oxfordshire County Council.

Clare Sumner