Watlington Park

Watlington Park is a country house built around 1755 for John Tilson. The building features English bond brickwork and a hipped Welsh slate roof, with internal brick stacks. It has a double-depth plan, two storeys and an attic, and a five-window range. The central block has three bays with a pediment and a lunette in the tympanum. A stone Doric porch with a triglyph frieze leads to late 19th-century double-leaf doors. The windows have gauged red brick flat arches above the sashes, and there is an ashlar string course and a modillioned eaves cornice. The house has four roof dormers, and the rear elevation and right side wall feature a canted bay.

Inside, the hall boasts a marble floor and fireplace, along with architectural trompe l'oeil decoration by Philip Tilden from 1921. There are panelled doors, some set in bolection-moulded architraves. The panelled rooms to the left contain finely carved mid-18th-century fireplaces and plaster cornices. The drawing room on the right has a fine marble fireplace, a modillioned cornice on torus moulding, and rococo plasterwork on the ceiling adorned with foliage and swans in the end panels, as well as Ionic columns at both ends. The open well staircase features twisted balusters and ramped handrails. The first floor has panelled rooms with plaster cornices and similar doors, with early 19th-century marble fireplaces, except for an 18th-century cast-iron grate to the right. A dog-leg service staircase with turned balusters is located at the rear left.

Watlington Park was sold to John Tilson, the son of the Under-Secretary of State, by the Stonors in 1753.