Newington House, one of Oxfordshire’s most recognisable 17th-century residences, has come to market at £16 million listed with Savills.

Pierre Paul Rubens - Palazzi di Genova, vol. I - Figura 68. WikiCommons.

Said to be built as a gift for an Italian princess, it was modelled on the palatial forms recorded by Peter Paul Rubens in Palazzi di Genova (1622)—the influential volume that introduced Northern Europe to Genoa’s Renaissance palaces—the Grade II* limestone house is a rare example of Italianate classicism transposed into the English countryside.

Set on 43 acres above the River Thame, the estate sits at the edge of Newington, an unspoilt village between Oxford and Wallingford. London is under 60 miles away, with fast routes via the M40 and rail links from Oxford and Didcot, placing the property within practical reach of the capital while retaining its rural privacy.

This Grade II* listed limestone masterpiece, built around 1679–80, stands as a direct transplant of Genoese Renaissance architecture into the English countryside—its symmetrical façade, giant-order pilasters, and classical proportions lifted almost verbatim from the engravings in Peter Paul Rubens’ Palazzi di Genova (1622).

Rubens, the great Flemish Baroque painter, published the two-volume work after a sojourn in Genoa, documenting the city’s newly built merchant palaces along the Strada Nuova (now UNESCO-listed). His precise architectural plates—elevations, plans, and sections—became the pattern book for European aristocrats seeking a modern alternative to Gothic or Tudor styles. At Newington, Henry Dunch (or his architect) chose one of these palaces—most likely the Palazzo Pallavicini-Carrega—as the model, creating what remains one of Britain’s purest exercises in Italianate classicism outside London.

The house occupies a private, elevated site above the River Thame on the edge of Newington village, six miles north of Wallingford and ten miles south-east of Oxford. London is comfortably reachable: under 60 miles via the M40, with fast trains from Didcot Parkway (15 minutes’ drive) or Oxford placing the capital within an hour. Yet the setting feels profoundly rural—flat vale meadows giving way to the Chiltern foothills, far from the honeyed bustle of the Cotswolds proper.

The estate’s history stretches back to a grant by Emma, consort of King Canute, to Canterbury Cathedral priory. After the Dissolution it passed through local landowners until Walter Dunch built a new manor in 1635. His nephew’s son Henry replaced it with the present palazzo in 1679, reputedly as a grand gesture for his Italian bride (a romantic detail that survives in local lore). In 1776 George White, a clerk of the House of Commons, acquired the house and added the second floor, hipped roof, and grand Corinthian porch that define its current silhouette.

In the early 20th century Newington became a celebrated intellectual retreat under American painter and hostess Ethel Sands. Sands, a friend of Walter Sickert and Vanessa Bell, filled the house with modern art and modernist conversation. Henry James spent weeks here working on The Ambassadors; Arnold Bennett mined its atmosphere for novels; Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, and other Bloomsbury figures arrived for long weekends of talk and croquet. The house’s light-filled rooms and tranquil gardens offered a perfect antidote to London’s clamor.

The main house exceeds 13,000 sq ft across four floors. A soaring entrance hall leads to three west-facing reception rooms that open in enfilade to the terrace. Marble fireplaces, elaborate cornices, and full-height sash windows create palatial scale without austerity. The lower ground floor—once cellars—now holds a gym, gun room, wine store, and a vast games room with a full-size snooker table believed to have come from Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms. Seven bedrooms occupy the upper floors, including a principal suite and two generous guest suites.

Separate from the main house are the five-bedroom Manor House and the four-bedroom Coach House — perfect for staff, guests, or the sort of multi-generational setup that £16 million now quietly expects. Stables, paddocks, a hard tennis court, heated pool, walled garden, rose garden, orchard and that lake with its own island complete the picture.

Forty-three acres of grounds unfold in layers: formal lawns and terraces give way to a walled Italian garden, rose garden, orchard, and greenhouse; beyond lie paddocks, woodland walks, a boating lake with island, hard tennis court, and heated swimming pool. The original 1679 stable block remains, ready for horses or cars.

Since acquiring the property in 1991, the Nettleton family has invested a decade in restoration—repointing stonework with specialist masons, replanting woodland, and creating the lake—while preserving every historic detail, from the Bisshopp family griffins on the gate piers to the 1777 lead rainwater heads.

Newington House is not merely a country house; it is a surviving fragment of 17th-century Europe transplanted to Oxfordshire soil—architecturally daring, culturally resonant, and quietly spectacular.

In a county that already possesses Blenheim, Buscot and a dozen other masterpieces, Newington House still contrives to feel like a delicious secret — a full-blown Italian palazzo that nobody quite believes is real until they stand on the terrace at sunset and watch the limestone turn the colour of Prosecco.