Shirburn Castle
Encyclopedia
Shirburn
Shirburn is a village and civil parish about south of Thame in Oxfordshire. The eastern part of the parish is in the Chiltern Hills.-Manor:Shirburn is a spring line settlement at the foot of the Chiltern escarpment...
, 6 miles (9.7 km) south of Thame
Thame
Thame is a town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, about southwest of the Buckinghamshire town of Aylesbury. It derives its toponym from the River Thame which flows past the north side of the town....
, Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
.
Shirburn Castle was the seat of the Earls of Macclesfield
Earl of Macclesfield
Earl of Macclesfield is a title that has been created twice. The first creation came in the Peerage of England in 1679 in favour of the soldier and politician Charles Gerard, 1st Baron Gerard...
. George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield
George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield
George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, FRS was an English peer and astronomer.Styled Viscount Parker from 1721 to 1732, he was Member of Parliament for Wallingford from 1722 to 1727, but his interests were not in politics...
(c.1695–1764), celebrated as an astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
, spent much time conducting astronomical observations at Shirburn Castle, which his father had bought in 1716. Here he built an observatory
Observatory
An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geology, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed...
and a chemical laboratory. In 1761 the astronomer Thomas Hornsby
Thomas Hornsby
Thomas Hornsby FRS was a British astronomer and mathematician.Hornsby became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1760....
observed the transit of Venus
Transit of Venus
A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth, becoming visible against the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun...
from the castle grounds.
The present owner of the castle is the Beechwood Estates Company, the Macclesfield family estate management company. Following a long-running and acrimonious court battle, the 9th Earl of Macclesfield, Richard Timothy George Mansfield Parker, was evicted from the family seat at the end of 2004 and the castle currently stands unoccupied.