Broughton Castle
Moated Manor House
Broughton Castle is a moated and fortified manor house near Banbury in North Oxfordshire. Set in parkland and built of the rich local Hornton ironstone, it was selected by Simon Jenkins as one of only twenty to be awarded five stars in his book England’s Thousand Best Houses.
The core of the house was built in 1306 and the gatehouse in the early fifteenth century, but most of what you see today dates from the 1550’s. It was a centre of opposition to Charles I and was besieged and damaged after the Battle of Edgehill in 1642.
The medieval manor house was later transformed into a Tudor mansion, surrounded by a wide moat set in parkland.A parliamentary rallying place in the 17th century,it was besieged by the royalists in the civil war. Arms and armour from this period are on display in the house.
The highly regarded one acre garden includes a walled formal garden and herbaceous borders containing old rose varieties and shrubs