Woodstock was one of England’s oldest royal houses occupied by the Saxon monarchs before the Norman Conquest. The Normans loved the site for its position and its excellent hunting. Henry II so liked the place that he founded the borough of New Woodstock nearby so his household would have somewhere to stay.
The bones of the house were laid out in the 13th century and included all the usual service buildings and a series of halls and chapels – one of the latter was, like that at Ludlow, circular. As at several other houses (Greenwich and Kenilworth for instance) there was a lesser, more intimate, retreat nearby where the king could stay. At Woodstock this was named Rosamunds and was a series of buildings grouped round a spring called Everswell to the west of the main manor. The water features and pools that are described at Rosamunds make it sound a bit like the Moorish palace of the Alhambra at Granada.
Henry VI commissioned a large new stone tower as part of his own lodgings, but this was not completed until the reign of Edward IV. Henry VII spent over £4,000 rebuilding the house. He put up a new gatehouse, new roof for the great hall, bay windows, and a jewel house that allowed him to bring his cash when he visited.
The park round the house was, unusually, enclosed by a stone wall built by Henry I (parks were usually fenced with timber paling on top of an earth bank). The circumference of the park wall was seven miles and so the area inside was small, however Woodstock was sited in the royal forest of Wychwood which was 25 miles one way and twenty miles the other. This whole huge landscape was under forest law restricting what people could do and, in particular, banning them from any sort of hunting.
The house has now completely vanished but we can work out that in the Tudor period it comprised two courtyards, the outer one approached by a gatehouse. In the middle of this court there was a fountain fed by a natural spring in the park. The royal lodgings, sited in a second court, were unusual because both the king and queen had great halls – the king’s was really big, approached by a flight of 35 stairs. The lodgings were also unusual because both suites of lodgings, in addition to the standard outer rooms had private drawing rooms. The queen’s bedroom was linked by a privy chamber to the king’s drawing room so the king could privately sleep with the queen if he wished.
In 1554-5 Queen Mary imprisoned her sister, Princess Elizabeth, at Woodstock; but an ancient royal manor wasn’t an ideal place to confine anyone because the queen’s rooms had several staircases and many windows: her gaoler complained that only three doors could be securely locked. Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I all used the house but made few, if any, alterations.
Woodstock was one of the few royal residences that was caught up in fighting during the Civil War. The royalists garrisoned the house and town which came under attack in 1646 and was then subjected to a siege by parliamentary forces. An artillery barrage caused severe damage to the buildings and after 20 days the Royalist garrison surrendered. In the months that followed the royal house was looted for building materials by local people whose homes had been damaged by the fighting.
In 1649 the manor was leased to three parliamentary officers and, in 1660, was reclaimed by Charles II. The later Stuarts only visited the part sporadically and, in 1704, the estate was presented by Queen Anne to the Duke of Marlborough as a gift for winning the battle of Blenheim.
The remains of the manor house were swept away on the orders of the Duchess while the park was being landscaped. The site of Woodstock manor house is within the grounds of Blenheim Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site.