www.cogges.org.uk

Cogges in the past

Just looking round the buildings at Cogges shows how the farm adapted to different agricultural trends, from farming crops in the 17th and 18th centuries to keeping livestock from the 1800s onwards. Wheat and barley barns, pig sties and stables, ox byre and dairy - indicators of changing economic circumstances over many generations.

People first settled at Cogges in the Saxon period, making their livelihood on the banks of the Windrush River. The first manor house was built in the 13th century by Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York. For two centuries the house remained in the de Grey family.

Through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries the house was altered and added to, and new barns and outbuildings built to support the farming activities. The house and farmstead continued to evolve to support the owners, tenants and workers who depended on the produce of its land, until it was bought by Oxfordshire County Council in 1974 and opened to the public as a farm museum. It has been sympathetically preserved by the Council in recognition of its beauty, uniqueness and importance to the local community and the many visitors who come from further afield to sample its stories and charms.

The Museum closed in 2009 and Oxfordshire County Council invited the newly formed Cogges Heritage Trust to take over the running of the site. The Trust secured a lease from the Council and reopened Cogges to visitors on Sunday 17th July 2011.