Centuries of stories, two remarkable families, and an enduring legacy in the heart of Oxfordshire.
Milton Manor House, a historic gem, is tucked away at the end of a quiet village lane in the small village of Milton in Oxfordshire. The sense of entering another world is immediate.
The moment you pass through the gates, there’s a palpable magic in the air — a feeling that time moves differently here, shaped more by history than by the rhythms of modern life.
Milton Manor House has belonged to just two families since the seventeenth century. At its core is a formal house built between 1630 and 1680, probably by 1663, whose design has long been associated with plans attributed to Inigo Jones, reflected in its symmetry and classical proportions.
M
ilton Manor has been in my family since 1764 when it was bought from the Caltons by my ancestor Bryant Barrett. My mother, Marjorie Mockler, moved into Milton Manor after the Second World War. It had stood empty for many years between the two wars. Between 1939 and 1945 the house had been occupied by the RAF and as a result was in a state of considerable dilapidation. Most of the original furniture had been sold including, alas, the beds that William of Orange and Peter the Great had once slept in. Marjorie restored Milton as a family home, which it still is. She opened it to the public; and on the first day only two people turned up.
She enjoyed doing the guiding herself, right up to her death; was absolutely excellent at it; and knew everything about the furniture and china which she seemed to us, her children, to spend most of her life dusting, polishing, spring-cleaning and, when necessary, gluing back together again.
One of the high points of her life came when Milton Manor was listed Grade One. She was immensely proud of her home.
And she had every right to be proud of it. It is a beautiful house, built when exactly? No one knows for sure: between 1630 and 1680 certainly, probably by 1663, three years after Charles II’s restoration. According to my mother, a lifetime Stuart fan, it was designed by the great Inigo Jones. But there the wish may have been father to the thought.
What went up in the 1660s was not, however, the house as you see it now, but only the heart of the present House: a formal, symmetrical gentleman’s residence (fronted by a French style parterre), standing foursquare, with its great oak staircase running from top to bottom, from the attics down to the kitchens, still rooms and servants’ quarters in what are now very dark and dank cellars 90 feet below.
It belonged for 218 years to one of what was then Berkshire’s great landowning families, the Caltons. The Caltons had built up their estates, like so many others, from monastic lands. In the Middle Ages the estate of ‘Middletune’- Milton – had belonged to the Benedictines of the Abbey of Abingdon. Was there a house on the site for the use of the Abbot’s bailiff? If so, all trace and record of it have disappeared. Henry VIII dispossessed and dissolved the abbey in 1538, and of the great abbey that made Abingdon so famous, only the ruins now remain.
But, again like so many other landed families, the fortune of the Caltons was gradually eroded by lawsuits and internal disputes. In 1764 the three Misses Calton sold the estate to my ancestor Bryant Barrett for £10,600 – they had asked £13,000; but he was a shrewd bargainer. It has been in our family ever since; passing from Bryant Barrett to John Richard Barrett who buried four wives; to John Basil Barrett known as “The Guvnor”, who lost his money in the Railway boom of the 1860s; to Louis Arthur Barrett, the last Squire of Milton, whom I remember shyly playing chess with at Manor farm as a young boy; then to my mother Marjorie Barrett, an only child and the last of the Barrett name, who married in Malta a naval officer of the Mediterranean Fleet, my father.
Louis Arthur asked in his will that I should add the name of Barrett to my own if I inherited; and that, I suppose, is how many double-barrelled names begin. So, I am Bryant Barrett’s great, great, great grandson; and the house has now been in our family for six generations and nearly 260 years – outdoing the Caltons!
Access to Milton Manor House is by guided tour only, preserving the intimate character of what remains a family home. This is no museum — you’ll see ashes in the grate, notes by the telephone, books left open on tables.
House tours last about an hour and are conducted by guides well versed in the history of the house and its families. Visitors are invited into several of the main rooms to see the splendid architecture and beautiful contents, and to learn something of the social history of the Georgian period.
One of the most remarkable features of Milton Manor House is its private Catholic chapel — a rare survival from an era of religious persecution in England.
During the 18th and early 19th centuries, Catholics represented less than 1% of the English population and faced significant legal restrictions. To practice their faith, recusant families — those who refused to attend Church of England services — built private chapels within their homes.
The fact that Bryant Barrett was given permission by George III to have a chapel within his house indicates a growing tolerance, which eventually culminated in the Catholic Relief Acts of 1778 and 1791. The chapel at Milton, however, was discreetly hidden from public view, allowing Bryant Barrett to practise his faith despite the limitations imposed upon him.
In 18th century England
Catholic family heritage
We invite you to experience Milton Manor House for yourself — to walk through rooms where history was made, to explore grounds shaped by generations, and to connect with a story that spans centuries.