Cuddesdon Palace ^[1] was the episcopal palace for the Bishop of Oxford , located near the village of Cuddesdon , Oxfordshire , England .

History [ edit ]

Cuddesdon Palace was completed by 1634 for John Bancroft , who was Bishop of Oxford from 1632 until 1641. ^[2] In 1644 during the English Civil War Royalist forces burned the palace to render it unusable by the Parliamentarian forces besieging Oxford. ^[2] In 1676 John Fell was made Bishop of Oxford and in 1679 he commissioned the complete rebuilding of the palace. ^{[2] [3]} This was under the control of a builder named Richard Frogley who subcontracted the sculptor Thomas Wood of Oxford for the ornamentation. ^[4]

In 1846 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce had the chapel of Saints Peter and Paul added to the Palace. ^[2] It was designed by the Gothic Revival architect Benjamin Ferrey . ^[2]

Successive Bishops of Oxford resided at the palace until Thomas Banks Strong retired in 1937. ^[2] For the duration of the Second World War Queen Anne's Bounty was evacuated from London and occupied the palace. ^[2] Thereafter, The Society of the Salutation of Mary the Virgin occupied the palace from 1946 until 1949. ^[2] In the 1960s the palace was in private use for a few years, but it burnt down before the end of that decade. The bishop's chapel escaped the fire and survives today. ^[5] Ripon College Cuddesdon is in the grounds of the palace, which is now a private residence.

The Bishop of Oxford now resides in North Oxford .

References [ edit ]

• Lobel, Mary D , ed. (1957). A History of the County of Oxford . Victoria County History . Vol. 5: Bullingdon Hundred. pp. 96?116.
• Sherwood, Jennifer; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Oxfordshire . The Buildings of England . Harmondsworth: Penguin Books . pp. 562?565. ISBN   0-14-071045-0 .

51°43′26″N 1°07′55″W  /  51.724°N 1.132°W  / 51.724; -1.132