Carswell Manor is a Jacobean country house at Carswell in the civil parish of Buckland in the English county of Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire). It is located just north of the A420 road between Swindon and Oxford.
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The Grade II Listed, three-storey manor house dates back to the early 17th century. It is constructed mainly of Cotswold stone and surrounded by mature woodland. Within the extensive grounds there is a ha-ha. There is also a dovecote dating from 1619 which is purported to be the first square dovecote built in Berkshire.
The house was probably built for John Southby who was High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1646/7 and MP for Berkshire in 1654/6. His family had lived on the site since 1584 and continued there until 1892.
The buildings were extensively restored and remodelled in between 1893 and 1898 by William Edward Graham Niven (1878–1915), a lawyer and architect, and the father of the actor, David Niven, to be his country residence. The Niven family's crest and motto is still set in stone above the front porch. The Niven family sold the property shortly after David's birth. The property was bought by Captain Francis Mourilyan Butler and his wife Josephine (neé Lawrence). Captain Butler was killed during The Great War. His only son (also called Francis) was brought up at Carswell Manor.
Since 1945 Carswell Manor has been the home of St Hugh's School an exclusive preparatory school which moved there from Malvern, where it had been evacuated during the war.