The Jersey mausoleum is attached to, and entered from, the north wall of the chancel of the medieval church of All Saints, in the grounds of Middleton Park. It was originally built in an exaggerated Gothic style, with turreted buttresses, an embattled gable and intersecting tracery in the north-facing window (see engraving in Skelton’s Antiquities of Oxford (1823)). When ‘Normanized’ in 1858, the window was replaced and pinnacles were substituted for the turrets.
The Bodleian Library has three watercolours of the 1860s of the interior. The walls were ‘marbled’, with bands of heraldic shields around the edges. Some of the decoration has gone, but the painted roof has been ‘recently restored’ and the heraldic stained glass is still there. The marble tablet and small black sarcophagus on the east wall commemorate Anne, Countess of Jersey (d.1762) while the relief tondos above the large marble Scipio sarcophagus are portraits of George Child Villiers, 5th Earl (d.1859) and his wife Sarah Sophia Child (d.1867).
The first architect of the mausoleum was probably Thomas Cundy, who restored Middleton Park for the 5th Earl in 1806-10. The second was S S Teulon.
Gothic Revival
Grade II (England and Wales)
1805
The first occupant of this mausoleum was George Bussy Villiers, 4th Earl of Jersey (1735-1805). Then, in 1858, the building was elaborately refurbished in time to receive the remains of George Villiers, 5th Earl of Jersey (d.1859) and his daughter, Clementina (d.1858). The family has continued to use the mausoleum until the present day, the last interment being in 1998.
Good (2002).
BoE: Oxon (1974), 701-2;
VCH: Oxon (1959), 249, n.39;
Bodleian Library, MS. Top.Oxon. a.48. ff.61-3;
Skelton’s Antiquities of Oxfordshire (1828).
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Church of All Saints
Middleton Stoney
Oxfordshire
OX25 4AW
England