Greys Court is a Tudor

country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

and

garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate both ...

s in the southern

Chiltern Hills The Chiltern Hills is a chalk escarpment in England. The area, northwest of London, covers stretching from Goring-on-Thames in the southwest to Hitchin in the northeast - across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, and Bedfordshire. ...

Rotherfield Greys Rotherfield Greys is a village and civil parish in the Chiltern Hills in South Oxfordshire. It is west of Henley-on-Thames and just over east of Rotherfield Peppard (locally known as Peppard). It is linked by a near-straight minor road to H ...

, near

Henley-on-Thames Henley-on-Thames ( ) is a town and civil parish on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, England, northeast of Reading, west of Maidenhead, southeast of Oxford and west of London (by road), near the tripoint of Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buc ...

in the county of

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Now owned by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

, it is located at , and is open to the public.

Overview

As ''Redrefield'' it was the principal manor of the six manors

held Held may refer to: Places * Held Glacier People Arts and media * Adolph Held (1885–1969), U.S. newspaper editor, banker, labor activist *Al Held (1928–2005), U.S. abstract expressionist painter. *Alexander Held (born 1958), German television ...

in 1086 (as listed in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

)Roy Martin Haines, « Grey, John de (d. 1214) », ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. by the Norman knight

Anchetil de Greye Anchetil de Greye (c. 1046 – after 1086) was a Norman chevalier and vassal of William FitzOsbern, 1st Earl of Hereford, one of the great magnates of early Norman England. He is regarded as the ancestor of the noble House of Grey, branches of whi ...

(c.1052- post-1086), ancestor of the prominent Grey family. The mainly Tudor-style house has a courtyard and gardens. The

walled garden A walled garden is a garden enclosed by high walls, especially when this is done for horticultural rather than security purposes, although originally all gardens may have been enclosed for protection from animal or human intruders. In temperate ...

s contain old-fashioned

rose A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be ...

s and

wisteria ''Wisteria'' is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae (Leguminosae), that includes ten species of woody twining vines that are native to China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Southern Canada, the Eastern United States, and north ...

, an ornamental vegetable garden, maze (laid to grass with brick paths, dedicated by Archbishop

Robert Runcie Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie, Baron Runcie, (2 October 1921 – 11 July 2000) was an English Anglican bishop. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1980 to 1991, having previously been Bishop of St Albans. He travelled the world widely ...

on 12 October 1981) and ice house. Within its grounds are the fortified tower built ''circa'' 1347, the only remains of the

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

, overlooking the gardens and surrounding countryside, as well as a Tudor wheelhouse. The house remains furnished as a family home, with some outstanding 18th-century plasterwork interiors. It is a

Grade I listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

John de Grey, 1st Baron Grey de Rotherfield John de Grey, 1st Baron Grey de Rotherfield, KG (9 October 1300 – September 1359) was an English soldier and courtier. John was the son and heir of Sir John de Grey of Rotherfield, by Margaret, daughter of William de Odingsells. John de Grey ...

, one of the original founder Knights of the Garter, was granted a license to crenellate his Rotherfield house in 1346, when he also considerably enlarged the group of buildings and added a castle around 1347. The estate passed to the Crown in 1485 and was granted to Robert Knollys in 1514 for an annual rental of a red rose, remaining in the Knollys family until 1642, during which time the current house and its associated buildings were constructed. Tower_and_ruined_wall,_Grey's_Court

Sir William Paul bought the house in 1686 and it passed via his son William's daughter's dowry to

Sir William Stapleton, 4th Baronet Sir William Stapleton, 4th Baronet ( 1698–1740), of Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire, was an English Jacobite and Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1727 to 1740. Early life Stapleton was brought up on Nevis in the British Leew ...

in 1724. Between 1935 and 1937 the house was occupied by Evelyn Fleming, mother of the author

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...

. In 1937 the house was bought from the Stapletons by

Sir ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as ...

Felix Brunner Sir Felix John Morgan Brunner, 3rd Baronet (13 October 1897 – 2 November 1982) was a British Liberal Party politician and business owner. He was the maternal uncle of Katharine, Duchess of Kent. Biography The son of Sir John Brunner, 2nd Baro ...

and his wife Lady Brunner (''née'' Elizabeth Irving), the granddaughter of the Victorian actor-manager

Sir Henry Irving Sir Henry Irving (6 February 1838 – 13 October 1905), christened John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility ( ...

. In 1969 the family donated the property to the

, where Lady Brunner continued to live until her death in 2003.

Use as a filming location

The house appeared in a series 3 (2012) episode of ''

Downton Abbey ''Downton Abbey'' is a British historical drama television series set in the early 20th century, created and co-written by Julian Fellowes. The series first aired in the United Kingdom on ITV on 26 September 2010 and in the United States o ...

'' when Crawley family visit the property, known to them as Eryholme. The house was used by the Dowager Countess' late husband as a hunting lodge. Robert, the Earl of Grantham, was considering moving there with his family as he was about to lose Downton to debt and taxes. It also appeared in the ITV series ''

Agatha Christie's Poirot ''Poirot'' (also known as ''Agatha Christie's Poirot'') is a British mystery drama television programme that aired on ITV from 8 January 1989 to 13 November 2013. David Suchet starred as the eponymous detective, Agatha Christie's fictional Her ...

'' in 2013. In the adaptation of '' Elephants Can Remember'' it is used as the home of one of the people

Ariadne Oliver Ariadne Oliver is a fictional character in the novels of Agatha Christie. She is a mystery novelist and a friend of Hercule Poirot. Profile Mrs Oliver often assists Poirot in his cases through her knowledge of the criminal mind. She often cla ...

visits while investigating the case. The episode was screened on 9 June 2013. Greys Court also appeared for external shots as "Midsomer Priory" in the ''

Midsomer Murders ''Midsomer Murders'' is a British crime drama television series, adapted by Anthony Horowitz and Douglas Watkinson from the novels in the '' Chief Inspector Barnaby'' book series (created by Caroline Graham), and broadcast on two channels of I ...

'' Series 14 episode entitled "A Sacred Trust".

References

External links

Greys Court information
from the National Trust *
Information
from Culture24
A bird's-eye view of Greys Court Rotherfield Greys in the 17th or 18th century
from

Scran Scran is a Scottish online resource for educational use by the public, schools, further education and higher education. It presents nearly 490,000 (still and moving) images and sounds contributed by museums, galleries, archives and the media. ...

AboutBritain.com information

Photos of Greys Court, Oxfordshire
petergoodearl.co.uk

by Michael W. Cook {{Museums and galleries in Oxfordshire Elizabethan architecture Gardens in Oxfordshire Manor houses in England Grade I listed houses in Oxfordshire Country houses in Oxfordshire National Trust properties in Oxfordshire South Oxfordshire District Historic house museums in Oxfordshire Henley-on-Thames Mazes Grey family residences

Overview

History

Use as a filming location

See also

References

External links