Stonor Park is one of the oldest family homes still lived in today. Home to the Stonor family for 840 years, parts of the house date back to the mediaeval period. Its latest addition is Tumblestone Hollow, a brand new adventure play area.
Created by CAP.Co in collaboration with William and Ailsa Stonor, Tumblestone Hollow evokes Stonor’s spirit and is the basis for a new children’s book by author Amy Sparks and illustrator Steve Pearce, The Legend of Tumblestone Hollow.
William Stonor spoke with blooloop about the house, its guardianship, and the keen sense of place he developed during his career that led him to want to create something that would be much more than a children’s adventure play park.
A varied career
“I had an unusual career,” he says. “I started off in finance, in private equity. After about four years of doing that, I moved to the foreign office, where I remained for just over eight years, working on Afghanistan and Iran. Just after I got married, I was posted with my wife out to Delhi in 2004 and had two and a half wonderful years living there, based at the High Commission. Then I came back, and spent three years based in London, working on counter-terrorism.
“I loved working for the foreign office. It was a genuine privilege. I was lucky enough to work on fascinating things, and I love to travel. It was incredible.”
In 2010, he went back into finance, in China:
“I combined my earlier experience in finance with the time I spent working in government and as a diplomat. I set up a financial advisory business in Beijing, where I lived with my family for five years, advising on cross-border finance, mainly between the UK and China, but also with Africa and other countries.”
The custodian of Stonor Park
In 2016 he returned to England to look after Stonor:
“I would probably have stayed a diplomat all of my life, were it not for the fact that I knew one day I’d be responsible for looking after my family home,” he says.
William Stonor is the 29th generation of his family to have lived at Stonor:
“We have lived here for 850 years, father to son. You can’t really do that if you are being posted abroad every three years. I’d love to have tried, but I was so lucky to have had those eight years in the foreign office. It was a bit of my working career that I’ll always cherish, and we have wonderful friends from all over the world.”
Experiencing so many diverse places and cultures had a profound impact on him in terms of developing an acute sense of place, something he touches on later, in relation to Tumblestone Hollow, the adventure playground he created for Stonor in conjunction with CAP.Co.
Despite being this generation’s custodian of Stonor, he remains involved with his work in China, and, as co-founder and director of Dido Property, is supporting the development of an 18 sound stage film studio in Marlow. He is also involved in numerous charities and is chairperson of the UK Trust for Nature Conservation in Nepal.
One of the oldest lived-in family homes
Stonor Park, which is situated near Henley-on-Thames in South Oxfordshire, is one of the oldest family homes still lived in today. The red brick façade masks a collection of much earlier buildings, with an origin in the mediaeval period.
“The oldest ancestor that we are aware of was here in 1150,” Stonor says. “We were probably here before that. My office is in an archive room; I’m surrounded by what is one of the three oldest family archives in the country.”
“The name of that first recorded ancestor was Robert De Stanora: Robert of the Stony Place; our name evolved from that; de Stanora became Stonor over the years. It refers to the prehistoric pagan stone circle that is here at Stonor, which is the oldest part. That is where everything is founded. “
In fact, the corner of one of Stonor’s oldest buildings, the Chapel, is built on one of the standing stones.
“Although the house looks quite symmetrical from the front, that’s a facade hiding the many buildings behind, and parts of the oldest buildings are still very much here. It’s a very complicated building, higgledy-piggledy and all over the place, as we find whenever we’re doing repair work.”
A place for children
There is a big repair project happening at the moment, supported by Historic England: Stonor is a Grade 1 listed house. It is, with its centuries of history and hiding-places, a wonderful place for children.
“We moved here when my grandfather died,” he says. “I was four, and grew up exploring the house. I know every bit of roof. Now, it’s wonderful for our children, who actually grew up in China. We sent them to a Chinese school in Beijing, for nearly six years; now they’re growing up here.”
“It’s a family place, which is why it wouldn’t have been right to have been abroad for the rest of my career. These places are homes. They need to be full of people, with children running around and screaming.”
Visiting stately homes
It was Stonor’s parents who first opened Stonor to the public as an attraction in 1979. When they took over as custodians, they realised that in order to look after itself, the property would have to generate an income.
“The estate and cottages had been sold over the last hundred years, so what we have is the house and the deer park around it. We are, a hundred percent, a hospitality and tourism business.”
When his parents opened the house and park to the public, it was, initially, a success:
“For the first 20 years, I would say, it worked very well, before Sunday trading and when there was less to do, and people were more interested in going around stately homes.”
Boosting Stonor Park’s income
For the first twenty years, the income was sufficient to cover the routine maintenance. Subsequently, however, this was no longer the case.
“The first thing that my wife and I embarked upon when we took over in 2016 was installing an adventure playground,” he explains:
“We realised that the majority of people who were visiting the house were, typically, retired, and would probably come once every 10 years. So, we needed a younger audience who would come regularly. We had two strategies, initially. One was to put in an adventure playground, and the other was to increase our events programme.”
In terms of events, Stonor’s Easter Trail in Tumblestone Hollow is one of the year’s biggest events, along with Halloween at Tumblestone Hollow.
This year, the Easter Trail will run every day from 9 – 24 April.
“Then we have a very popular Mediaeval Jousting Tournament,” Stonor adds. “We normally do one a year, but we’re adding a second one, over the Jubilee weekend, from the 3rd to the 5th of June, and then we do another one in September.”
Events at Stonor Park
Another popular event is Gifford’s Circus, which will be at Stonor Park this year from 14 – 18 July:
“They are very much a regular feature of our event programme now,” he adds. “We also have a series of music concerts in August: Café Mambo; Texas are playing part of their tour this year here, and then we have a classical concert. We have a big supercars and classics event that my wife and I started about four or five years ago that has just gone from strength to strength on the weekend of the 21st and 22nd of May, and the Great Antique and Vintage Car Boot Fair on the 15th.”
There are also plays in the park: The Lord Chamberlain’s Men are performing As You Like it on the 9th of June. It is a rich and varied programme. This year, the events schedule has been supplemented with the addition of a glamping business, Drovers’ Hill at Stonor, which will open later this summer:
“We have put in some beautiful shepherd’s huts that we’ve had designed and made for us. They’re unique. They are on top of a hill overlooking the park, with incredible views for miles across the Chilterns.”
A new project
Before Tumblestone Hollow, the first iteration of Stonor Park’s adventure playground opened at the end of 2016.
“It was literally just a playground,” Stonor says. “It did OK. In our first year, we probably had 12,000 extra visitors because of it. We thought that was great, but it quite quickly plateaued. Looking at it in 2019, we realised that it needed to be more than just playground equipment. It had to be something really special, and it had to have a very strong sense of narrative, and of place.”
The plan was to create a playground that would be a destination in its own right:
“And I was put in touch with Simon Egan. We had some wonderful conversations with the team; we’d looked at what they’d done around England, and could see that they understood what we wanted to create: something unique, that just wasn’t only an amazing playground, but something children would totally immerse themselves in, with that strong sense of narrative and place.
“So Simon spent a couple of days here, soaking up the place.”
Tumblestone Hollow
Stonor hadn’t decided what the adventure playground’s narrative should be based on:
“Should it be something to do with the family? Or there’s a lot of Gothic architecture here: should it take that as a starting point?”
CAP.Co’s Simon Egan, having thought about it, realised what the story ought to be:
“He said, ‘Look: it’s really obvious. It should be about the stone circle, of course.’ It had been staring us in the face, but, as is so often the case, we needed someone from outside to spot it.”
Accordingly, they embarked on a journey of creation.
“This partnership with CAP.Co really has been a partnership. It wasn’t simply a case of them giving us a design for something, building it, and then moving on; they have partnered with us the whole way. And we were very much involved with coming up with these wonderful, whimsical designs, too.
“I would screenshot lots of different bit things from films that I’d seen, and say, ‘This is something I kind of want in here. I don’t just want single walkways in the trees, I want them to be double or even triple-decker walkways. And I don’t want any straight lines, I want them higgledy-piggledy.’
“They just got all that, and came up with Steve Pearce ‘s wonderful drawings: these lovely houses where the characters could live.”
A collaborative project
He knew he wanted the creation to be rooted in a strong story:
“I then spent months researching children’s writers, and got in touch with a wonderful children’s author called Amy Sparkes.”
He explained the project to her:
“I showed her Steve Pearce’s drawings about this place, built around a stone circle. I said, ‘We’ve got ideas of storylines, but can you take it from here?’ I’d like to think I’m quite creative, and I’ve got ideas, but I’m not a writer, and I certainly wasn’t able to put a story together.”
Amy Sparkes accepted the challenge and has written two books. The first, ‘The Legend of Tumblestone Hollow’ is a picture book that sets the scene in rhyme: an origin story that reads like a spell of protection. It introduces a wizard-like guardian, Obsidian, who saves the stones from malign shadows, and plants them in a safe place, hidden from view, near an ancient Field Maple tree within a beautiful valley that will, one day, become Stonor Park.
“Then it tells of the people that came to live by the stones, and who built these wonderful structures where they live, which incorporate the stones.”
Telling a story at Stonor Park
The second book, ‘The Moonwitch and the Thief’, aimed at children between six and ten, is longer, and, in thirteen chapters interspersed with Pearce’s beautiful illustrations, tells of a peril that threatens the stones, against which the denizens of Tumblestone Hollow must battle.
It is a story full of adventure, magic, community, friendship, danger and excitement. Beyond that, it is a story of compassion, forgiveness, and redemption.
Stonor says:
“We are planning on having more of those books, maybe one a year.”
An immersive experience
The playground breathes further life into the stories:
“We have this amazing main tower built on huge boulders and rocks. We have little houses in the trees, and walkways between them.”
The space, designed for four to twelve-year-olds alongside their families, draws on the spirit of place, acknowledging the ancient stone circle, which is echoed in the playground’s large boulders, and the unique peace of the valley in which it is placed, surrounded by the Chiltern hills. Part-funded by the Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage, it opened in April 2021.
Created from sustainably sourced chestnut, the structures of Tumblestone Hollow draw children into an immersive story, as they explore high-level walkways, climbing nets, look-out decks and bridges, connected by the distinctive, gnarled central tower, where a dual spiral stairway leads to a lookout platform, then on to the connecting bridges.
The success of Tumblestone Hollow
The conversations with CAP.co began in 2019:
“The intention was to build it in early 2020, and then of course COVID hit. Everything was put on ice for about six months.”
The early drawings had been completed, and the planning application permission was through to extend the original play equipment, which has been incorporated into the design:
“We continued with the old playground through 2020. 2020 was a horrible year, for everyone. Then, over the winter of 2020, 2021 we built Tumblestone Hollow, and it has been amazing.”
“The reaction to it has been incredible. Thankfully, we were able to have it open last year. We limited the number of people coming in when restrictions were still in place. In 2020, I think we had 19,000 people come to the adventure playground. People were allowed to go outdoors, at that point, so from that perspective, it wasn’t bad.
“We couldn’t have anyone around the house, or to hold most of our events. But then last year, with the building of Tumblestone Hollow, the book and the branding and the strong story, we had just short of 60,000 people.”
Play and F&B
Stonor adds: “It was quite funny, actually; we asked CAP.co to help us with modelling the forecasting last year.”
Their prediction seemed a little optimistic, while he was more cautious: “They were pretty confident. I couldn’t believe we were going to do that, and I didn’t dare do our budget on that figure. I cut it by 25%.”
This was, as it transpired, unnecessary:
“Well, we beat what they had predicted. We had 60,000 people, and they just loved it. They loved the story and the beautiful structures.”
Another addition to the playground is a shepherd’s hut, The Rumble Hut, with an Italian pizza oven.
“We managed to find a fantastic Italian pizzaiolo, whom we employed last year, and who has been making pizzas for 30 years, so there are wood-fired pizzas made every day. Next month we’re adding a second shepherd’s hut because on busy days we can’t keep up. It will also serve very traditional, really great American-style hamburgers and fries, and Italian soft-serve ice cream. We have a lovely tepee, too, for people to sit in.”
Future plans for Stonor Park & Tumblestone Hollow
New items of theming are being added, to keep bringing the story out for visitors:
“We intend to continue to add bigger equipment over the next couple of years,” Stonor explains. “We’re looking already at another really big tower to go in next winter, in time for next year. It’s exciting, and we want it to keep growing and evolving for people.”
In conclusion, he picks up the first book, and reads:
“Welcome to the mysterious world of Tumblestone Hollow. It’s been hiding in plain sight, right under our noses for many millennia. Throughout this time, the people who live here have been quietly going about their business, keeping the standing stones safe, that surround their magical home.
“Finally, after more than 552 and a half years of careful negotiation between the Stonor family and the people of Tumblestone Hollow, they have agreed to let us all into their wonderful world. It’s a place of laughter and light, shadow and sunshine, peace and tranquillity. Most importantly, for young and old, friends and family, it’s a beautiful, magical place to play together.”
Images kind courtesy of Stonor Park. Header image credit Suzanne Fossey
