“Lyford Grange, just east of the village, was originally a moated manor house of Abingdon Abbey built in a quadrangle. The present house was built between 1430 and 1480. … In the reign of Elizabeth I the Grange belonged to a recusant family, the Yates, who harboured a community of Bridgettine nuns.
“In 1581 the house was searched, three priests were eventually found and arrested by the government agent, George Eliot: Thomas Ford, John Colleton and the renowned Jesuit, Edmund Campion. They were subsequently tried and martyred.
“... The raid and martyrdoms did not stop recusancy at Lyford. In 1690 an informer reported that a small estate in the parish had been reserved to build a nunnery ‘when Popish times should come’.”