The Great Kitchen Approximately 40 Metres South of Harcourt House is a Grade I listed building in the West Oxfordshire local planning authority area, England. A Medieval Kitchen.

The Great Kitchen Approximately 40 Metres South of Harcourt House

WRENN ID
twisted-storey-equinox
Grade
I
Local Planning Authority
West Oxfordshire
Constituency
Witney MP: Charlie Maynard (LD)
Country
England
Type
Kitchen
Period
Medieval
OS grid reference
SP 416 056
Coordinates
51.74763, -1.39876
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Great Kitchen, located approximately 40 metres south of Harcourt House, dates back to around 1485, with possible earlier origins. It is constructed from coursed limestone rubble and features a conical stone slate roof topped with a lead griffin. The kitchen is designed as a square tower that is open to the roof. The front of the tower has a hood mould over three 15th-century two-light trefoil-headed windows. There are gargoyles along the cornice beneath a crenellated parapet, and a stair turret in the left corner has slit lights and a similar parapet. The left side has offset buttresses, while the rear wall displays hood moulds over two 15th-century two-light trefoil-headed windows and a wide blocked 4-centred arched doorway. Access is now through a 15th-century doorway in the rear wall of the Manor Farmhouse.

Inside, the left side wall contains three ovens, one featuring a medieval door, an aumbry, and a 15th-century plank door with decorative iron hinges leading to stone newel stairs. The opposite wall has two screen walls that flank spaces for two fires, with smoke escaping through two rows of six pointed louvred vents in each bay, located under the eaves of the roof and regulated from a passage behind the battlements. Squinches support an octagonal structure that holds the roof, with head corbels in each corner supporting arch-braced squinch arches featuring traceried spandrels and eight arched ribs converging at the apex. The kitchen has three tiers of arch bracing to the purlins and is recognized as one of the finest medieval kitchens still in existence. It was formerly attached to the service end of the medieval manor house, which was demolished around 1750.

Local climate

The Great Kitchen Approximately 40 Metres South of Harcourt House receives an average of 750 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 72% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 65% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 32 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 59% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

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Nearby listed buildings

  1. Harcourt House and Attached Walls and Outbuildings Grade II* 67 m
  2. 13, Stanton Harcourt Grade II 69 m
  3. 12, Stanton Harcourt Grade II 74 m
  4. Numbers 14/15 and Attached Outbuilding Grade II 79 m
  5. Stanton Harcourt War Memorial Grade II 79 m
  6. Church of St Michael Grade I 84 m
  7. Number 17 and Estate Office Grade II 97 m
  8. 11, Stanton Harcourt Grade II 103 m
  9. Bedwell's Farmhouse Grade II 121 m
  10. The Harcourt Arms Public House Grade II 127 m