Ewelme Park - history, deer, beasts - a royal Tudor deer park

More than 250 years of intriguing history in the Oxfordshire countryside, with connections to some of England’s best known historical figures. A royal Tudor deer park rediscovered.

Created on land originally owned by Geoffrey Chaucer’s son, Thomas, and forfeited to the Crown for treason in the reign of Henry VII, for a time it was looked after by one of Anne Boleyn’s alleged adulterers. Henry VIII gave it to his sister, Mary Tudor, and her husband the Duke of Suffolk. It then came back to the Crown and passed to Elizabeth I. Her favourite, the Earl of Essex, was a visitor before his execution. It subsequently passed to James I then Charles I, before being sold off and dis-parked.

For much of its existence it was a substantial Royal deer park and, for at least the latter half of that time, seems to have been home to a herd of the rare wild white cattle.