Blenheim Palace
— — a baroque house and the lawn that holds it.
Not only on a wall.
“Blenheim Palace stands on 2,000 acres of Oxfordshire just outside Woodstock, the only non-royal country house in England titled a palace. Parliament built it for the first Duke of Marlborough after the 1704 battle that gave the place its name. A century later Capability Brown shaped the grounds into the long open landscape they still hold. Winston Churchill was born in a small ground-floor room in 1874. from the studio
Blenheim Palace, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Blenheim Palace stands on roughly 2,000 acres just outside Woodstock in Oxfordshire, about 13 km northwest of Oxford. Parliament granted the estate and funded the house for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, in gratitude for his victory at the Battle of Blenheim on 13 August 1704. Construction began in 1705 to designs by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor and continued until 1722. The estate became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. The palace remains the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough and is open to the public.
The palace is built of honey-coloured Taynton limestone from quarries just west in the Cotswolds, the same stone that built much of central Oxford. Vanbrugh's baroque elevations are unusual in English country-house architecture: heavier, more theatrical, closer in spirit to a continental palace than to a Palladian villa. The stone weathers softly and warms to gold in afternoon light. The Great Court, the South Front, and the bridge across the lake by Vanbrugh read together as a single architectural composition across the valley.
Blenheim is reached from London by train to Oxford (about an hour from Paddington) and then by S3 bus to Woodstock, or by car off the A44. The palace, formal gardens, and park are open most of the year, with a single Privilege ticket giving annual return access. Lancelot 'Capability' Brown reshaped the landscape between 1763 and 1774, damming the river Glyme to form the 150-acre lake and removing the formal parterres. Park-only entry is cheaper and gives access to the Grand Bridge and the Column of Victory.