Burford Priory

Burford Priory is a Grade I listed country house and former priory at Burford in West Oxfordshire, England owned by Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert Murdoch, together with Matthew Freud. History Origin The house is on the site of a 13th-century Augustinian hospital. In the 1580s an Elizabethan house was built by Sir Lawrence Tanfield, incorporating remnants of the Priory Hospital. James I stayed at the priory for three nights in 1603. In the 17th century it was remodelled in Jacobean style, probably after 1634 when William Lenthall bought the estate from Tanfield's grandson, the 2nd Viscount Falkland, who had inherited it from his grandfather. Lenthall was one of the overseers of Tanfield's will and had married into his second wife's family. It remained in the Lenthall family until 1828. The Lenthall pictures were housed here until the collection was largely sold in the nineteenth century. In 1828 the house and the Manor of Burford was purchased by the Greenaway family of Little Barrington, and their descendant Nicholas Greenaway Mills is the current Lord of the Manor. In 1912, the philanthropist Emslie John Horniman MP purchased Burford Priory from Colonel Frank de Sales la Terrière. He restored the house and later the chapel under the supervision of the architect Walter Godfrey.