As the traveller crosses the wooded ridge of the Chilterns, and descends into the vale of Oxford,—whether from Stokenchurch or from the little hamlet of Greenfield,—Shirburn lies almost immediately beneath him. The now thickly sheltered house is one of the few castellated and still moated buildings, in England, which have been adapted to the requirements of modern comfort, without any—or with scarcely any—sacrifice of external congruity. Castellated in 1377, when part of the existing structure was already a building of respectable antiquity, it passed successively, and by many vicissitudes, through the families of De Lisle, Beauchamp, Talbot, Quatremaine, Fowler, Chamberlayne, and Gage, until it was purchased by the Lord Chancellor Macclesfield from Thomas, Viscount Gage, at the beginning of the last century.