Nuneham House Nuneham House is a Palladian villa , at Nuneham Courtenay in Oxfordshire England . It was built for Simon Harcourt , 1st Earl Harcourt in 1756 . It is owned by Oxford University and is currently used as a retreat centre by the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University . It is a Grade II * listed building . Lord Harcourt demolished the old village in the 1760s in order to create a landscaped park around his new villa . He removed the village in its entirety , and recreated it along the main Oxford road ( now the A4074 ) . The house was built in 1757 by Stiff Leadbetter for the 1st Earl Harcourt , with the interior by James Stuart . Lancelot " Capability " Brown designed the landscaped grounds . In the 1760s Oliver Goldsmith witnessed the demolition of an ancient village and destruction of its farms to clear land to become a wealthy man ' s garden . His poem " The Deserted Village " , published in 1770 , expresses a fear that the destruction of villages and the conversion of land from productive agriculture to ornamental landscape garden s would ruin the peasantry . " The Deserted Village " gave the demolished village the pseudonym " " Sweet Auburn " " , and Goldsmith did not disclose the real village to which it refers . However , he did indicate it was about from London and it is widely believed to have been Nuneham Courtenay . The house was altered by Henry Holland in 1781 - 2 , including the heightening of the wings . In 1789 the 2nd Earl Harcourt re - erected the Carfax Conduit building in a prominent position in the park . It had had to be moved from Carfax in the centre of Oxford , where it was an obstacle to traffic . In 1904 , after the death of Sir William Vernon Harcourt , Nuneham House was passed to his son , Lewis Vernon Harcourt , 1st Viscount Harcourt , known by many as " Loulou " . He had just married Mary Ethel Burns , who was a niece of American financier and banker , J . P . Morgan . The estate inherited by the young couple was in need of major renovations , which they could not afford . For his niece , Morgan established a £52 , 000 ( $ 260 , 000 ) line of credit at his London bank , which he told her did not need to be repaid . The Harcourts used these funds to renovate the old buildings and grounds . During World War II , Nuneham House and the park around it was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence and became RAF Nuneham Park . It was a P . R . I . U . or photographic reconnaissance interpretation unit . Examining the photographs taken by aircraft from RAF Benson and other airfields over enemy territory , were not only RAF officers but also small contingents from the Army , Royal Navy and the USAAF . Nissen hut s and other , larger , buildings were erected adjacent to the mansion , including a camp cinema which villagers were welcome to attend . The RAF station continued after the war in the same role until the mid - 1950s , when the added buildings and roadways were demolished and the estate handed back to the Harcourt family , who sold it to Oxford University . The Harcourt Arboretum , part of the tree and plant collection of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden , occupies part of what were the grounds of Nuneham House .