Court Leys, Toot Baldon, is the large house situated at the end of the chestnut avenue leading to St Lawrence’s Church, on the eastern side.
It is believed that its name may derive from the large inclosure which lay to the south of Court House Farm and stretched nearly as far as the church. Alternatively, Court Leys may have been named after Louches Court—the house of the medieval lord of the manor of Baldon St. Lawrence, which has long since disappeared.
The current house was built in 1860 as the parsonage for Edmund Peel, who was vicar of Toot Baldon from 1860 to1871. The Queens College, Oxford assigned land to the diocese in order to build a rectory for Peel and future incumbents. It was designed by the architect Henry Woodyer, who had designed several parsonages in Oxfordshire in the gothic style, and built by John Carter, an Oxford builder, for the sum of £2,575. The architectural historian Pevsner called it “a large and cheerful gothic vicarage of red brick and stone”. The costs were met from a variety of sources – a public appeal, the Diocesan Society, the Queen’s College, the Queen Anne’s Bounty and Peel himself.
Court Leys served as the parsonage for successive vicars of Toot Baldon, including James C. Ross [link here], who lived there from 1871 to 1888. In 1887, Ross was paying Queen’s College £9 per annum in rent. It was sold to private owners after the First World War.
Court Leys in 1975
In 1921 Charles Gabriel Seligman, an anthropologist of some renown, was living in the house with his wife Brenda, his son Robert and three servants. He was still living there in 1939. During his time Seligman added a large hall to provide an exhibition space for his collection.
In the 1940s the house was inhabited by Anthony Farrell, a tutor in philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was an emigré from South Africa, who apparently left because he did not agree with the apartheid system. When he drove his car down the avenue, local children would sometimes hitch a ride by standing on the running board and holding on to the handles!
Some of the upper floor of the house was destroyed by fire in 1980.
Sources for this article: Life and Faith in a Victorian Village, Marcus Braybooke, Braybrooke Press, 2021; Census records; Pers. comm. from Geoffrey and John Mawer and Frances Jones.