STATELY HOMES, CASTLES & TOWERS

**HISTORY**

Oxney is an old parish, over 1,000 years old, and mentioned in the Domesday Book. It stayed a parish until it joined St Margaret’s in the early 1900s. 
Originally called Oxene, it grew into a small settlement around a main house.
The Romans landed nearby at Deal in 54 BC. Reports say there was a massacre of ancient Britons in the valley and at Knight's Bottom near Kingsdown. 
Roman camps were set up in these areas, and stories say they were attacked at night by local people, leading to heavy losses for the locals.
Oxney Bottom was once a place where travellers stopped to water their horses and stretch their legs on the road between Dover and Deal.
In the twelfth century, it was owned by the Auberville family of Westernhanger. They came to the region as Normans after the 1066 conquest.
Sir William de Auberville, a knight who fought at the Battle of Senlec, owned Oxney Parish during King Richard I’s reign. In 1192, he founded the Abbey at West Langdon, and the church at Oxney served as a 'chapel of ease' under the Abbey, used by the estate owners and workers.
The main part of the building dates from the 12th century, but it changed quite a bit in the 13th century. The west wall was rebuilt and given a large pointed arch window.
After the Battle of Bosworth Field, in August 1485, a supporter of Henry VII took over Oxney Court.
Tradition says that, besides the stone church, stood simple wooden outbuildings for the one or two monks who looked after it. These may have included sleeping cells, a refectory, a kitchen, and a cellarium.
Later, the owners built three buttresses to strengthen the wall. The church was dedicated to St Nicholas.
In 1535, during the Reformation under Henry VIII, the Abbey at Langdon was dissolved. Royal commissioners ransacked abbeys, cathedrals, and churches, removing anything linked to papistry and idolatry.  Religious buildings were either destroyed or given away as royal favours. Oxney abandoned its church.
The church doors were left open to the weather, the wooden parts rotted quickly, and the monks' outbuildings soon fell apart too.
According to one story from the 1700s, the youngest son of the New Inn’s innkeeper (later called the Compasses) became a highwayman, using the gloomy, dark highway of Oxney to his advantage. He would hide behind trees and rob male passengers at gunpoint, but he never robbed women or killed anyone. Eventually, two constables from Dover caught him, and after his trial, he was hanged in chains on a tree where he had committed his crimes. People also say that in 1965, during renovations at his father's pub, a small compartment was uncovered behind the fireplace. Inside were a black mask, a tricorn hat, a cloak, riding boots, and a brass-barreled blunderbuss.
For more history and details about past landowners, see Edward Hasted’s 'Parishes: Oxney' in The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent: Volume 9 (Canterbury, 1800).
Losing the church, changes in ownership, and how the house was used made the workers' homes unnecessary, and so they were left to the elements. Today, the old workers' cottages named Oxney Bottom Cottage, Knights Bottom, The Lynch, and Gallows Bend have all disappeared, and only traces of the old settlement remain.
In the 1760s, James Jeken, an attorney from Canterbury, the lay rector, and tenant of the court lodge, took over the land and manor house. He also received the parish tithes.
Around 1816, John May remodelled the house. He had made his fortune during the Napoleonic Wars. It was given a Gothic style inspired by John Nash, and the upper windows once looked out over the sea.
In the 1840s, Richard Roffey owned the estate. He married Mary Ann Banks in 1813, who was the daughter of Sir Edward Banks, a civil engineer who built several Thames bridges. After Richard died, their son Richard John Roffey took over. The 1851 Census lists him as a farmer and landowner with over 200 acres, employing 18 men,
His sister, Margaret Ellen Roffey, married her cousin William John Banks, a Welsh-born English amateur cricketer, in 1844. Their other sister, Nancy Ann Roffey, married Edward Richard Rupert George Banks. Both men were sons of Mary Ann’s brother, John Franklin Banks. 
When Richard John Roffey died in 1859, Margaret Ellen inherited the estate and lived there with her family. The Banks family kept Oxney for almost 100 years.
The Oxney Court Dairy opened in 1892.
After years of being abandoned, the church ruins were re-consecrated in the late 1800s as a family burial ground for people living at Oxney Court.
The graves were once quite elaborate, with carved alabaster busts, along with the headstones and memorial slabs that remain. These mark the resting places of the Banks, LaCosta, and Doig families.
In the early 1900s, Archeologists found Roman artefacts and a body at Martin Mill, and the Banks family at Oxney Court kept the relics.
During the First World War, the Army took over the building as a headquarters, officers’ residence, and a respite for recovery. While they were there, a mysterious fire broke out. Only the stone walls survived, as the fire destroyed the roof and any remaining wooden parts, leaving the building in ruins.
Major Herbert Delamark Banks, the last of the family line, never married and lived as a recluse in his final years. He died in 1931, and his burial was the last Banks family member laid to rest in the church grounds.
Upon his death,  the Kentish Express (Friday 24 April 1931) reported that his possessions from Dower House, next to Oxney Court, were auctioned. The land passed to the Doig family. He had left it to his niece, Constance Mary, the only child of his sister Margaret Mary Ann Banks, who was buried at the church in 1874. Constance Mary married Claude Mendergast Doig, an Army Captain from Galway, Ireland. 
Then, through marriage, it was owned by the LaCosta family, who permitted the Boy Scouts to use the woods.
Lacoste family sold the Oxney Court Dower House to Dr Simon Behrman of Harley Street as a country retreat; he sought planning consent to build homes for the elderly, which was not approved.
Later, permission was given to restore Oxney Court. About half of the original walls and the tower were still standing, but the roof was gone.
In July 1935, John Stanley McIntyre, a tea and rubber broker visiting from Ceylon, went missing from the Glen Hotel and was later found dead in the woods. His body, discovered several weeks later by 13-year-old Peter Sanderson, showed cuts to his arm and throat and a razor nearby. He had a heart condition and neurasthenia. The verdict was suicide. 
There are also reports that a child fell to his death in the well of the abandoned manor house in the 1960s. It was said to be too dangerous to recover the body, so it was left there. I have not found any newspaper reports about this, though there are stories of boys falling down wells elsewhere in the UK, but they were all rescued and survived.
It is also said that in the 1970s, a Naval commander hanged himself from a tree in Oxney woods, but again, I have not found any newspaper reports about this.
John Smedley (b 1946) was a senior Treasury officer when he took over Oxney Court and began rebuilding and expanding it.
The old manor house was given a Grade II listing by English Heritage on 23 April 1987, but it was still left to decay in the weather.
In 1999, the old manor house, which had been in ruins and open to the public, was sold—reportedly to the daughter of the late Lord Charles Forte. Planning permission was granted to use it as a private home, and a careful, major rebuild began, bringing new life to the house.
Today, almost all of the woodlands and land in Oxney are private property, and trespassers may be prosecuted.
There were once two entrances, but now only the one near the Animal Inn on Dover Road remains.
The church ruins lay in the woods on the left.
Over the years, vandals have damaged the original walls, and reports say headstones have been moved and damaged. Some even say that dark rituals may have taken place in the ruins.
In 2012, Nataliya Yurov and her husband Ilya, a former Russian banker, bought the estate. They have made many improvements to the manor house and grounds, including an oak-framed outdoor kitchen and entertainment area, a new cinema room, a whole-house entertainment system, a barn converted into a gym, a new kitchen, updated heating and hot water systems, and an adventure playground.
In 2024, with their children now grown, they put the estate up for sale as they look to downsize in the area.
As of 2026, the estate is still for sale for £6.5 million. You can view the listing by clicking on the picture. It is an amazing place and also includes a Seperate Four Bedroom Detached Guest house, Two Bedroom Staff Cottage and the former Stables with a Kitchen, Cinema Room, Bedroom and En-Suite.