Braziers Park, Ipsden

About Braziers Park

Braziers Park is a community, a residential college and an architectural treasure hidden deep in the south Oxfordshire countryside in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

It was founded in 1950 as an educational trust and is a continuing experiment in the advantages and problems of living in a group.

Community members share responsibility for running the mansion house (a Grade II* listed building), 55 acres of land, organic kitchen garden and livestock, facilitating courses and organising events assisted by visiting volunteers from around the world.

Braziers Park, exploring Conscious Co-Existence…

As one of the oldest secular communities in the UK, it endeavours to create a space that enables people to integrate both learning and teaching.

It also helps people find and develop their full potential in all aspects of life – intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual.

At Braziers Park, they strive to understand, more fully, our relationships with each other and with nature and society so that they can co-operate in taking constructive action in the world today.

The main house

Drive in through the gates, up the drive, and turn the corner under a large dark spreading conifer, and you will come to the main house looking out over the gentle slope of the front park.

The main house at Braziers is one of the few surviving examples of a Strawberry Hill Gothic style country house. It has been designated a Grade II* listed building Since 1985. The unique character of the main house makes it an attractive and unusual location for film-makers.

Gardens, land and outbuildings

The gardens at Braziers Park is 57 acres of South Oxfordshire countryside – comprising lawns, terrace gardens, ornamental gardens, kitchen gardens, livestock areas, woodland and fields.

Several outbuildings add much to the charm of Braziers. Close to the main house lie Courtyard Cottage and the laundry. Slightly further away is a traditional raised granary, a coach house (with horse stalls and adjoining garage), the Bothy, dog kennels, the egg house and a wooden barn.

At the end of the gardens lies the summer house, and buried deep in the woodland is a wooden building, which was originally built as a community hall, and subsequently converted to a squash court and tiny theatre.