Oakley Court is a
Victorian Gothic 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 ...
set in overlooking the
River Thames at
Water Oakley in the
civil parish of
Bray in the
English county of
Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...
. It was built in 1859 and is currently a hotel. It is a Grade II* listed building that has been often used as a film location.
Overview
The Court was built in 1859 for Sir Richard Hall Say who married Ellen Evans of Boveney Court in 1857. He was appointed
High Sheriff of
Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...
in 1864 and
Justice of the Peace
A justice of the peace (JP) is a judicial officer of a lower or ''puisne'' court, elected or appointed by means of a commission ( letters patent) to keep the peace. In past centuries the term commissioner of the peace was often used with the sa ...
in 1865. In 1874 Oakley Court was sold to
Lord Otho FitzGerald
Lord Otho Augustus FitzGerald PC (10 October 1827 – 19 November 1882) was a British soldier and Liberal politician. He notably served as Comptroller of the Household under William Gladstone between 1868 and 1874. He was also a noted amateur ...
, then to a John Lewis Phipps and in 1900 to
Sir William Beilby Avery of
Avery Scales. In 1919 Ernest Olivier purchased the property together with of Berkshire woodland for £27,000.
Sir Richard Hall-Say
Richard Hall-Say built Oakley Court in 1859 two years after his marriage. He was born as Richard Hall in 1827. His father was Richard Hall, a merchant, but it was his mother Harriet Say that brought to him his great wealth. She was the daughter and co-heir of Robert Say who owned Pennington Hall near Manchester. When her uncle, the Rev. Henry Say who had no direct heirs, died in 1855, Richard inherited and took the additional name of Say to become Richard Hall-Say. In 1857, he married Ellen Evans, who was the only child of Edward Evans of Boveney Court in Windsor. The couple had six children, two boys and four girls. Their eldest daughter Mary Violet Hall-Say married the Rev Arthur Henry Austen Leigh who was the great nephew of
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...
. In about 1874, the Hall-Say family sold Oakley Court to Lord Otho Fitzgerald.
Lord Otho Fitzgerald
Otho Fitzgerald lived in Oakley Court from 1874 until his death in 1882. He was born in 1827 in London and was the third son of the Duke of Leinster. He entered the army and served in the Royal Horse Guards. He was elected as a Member of Parliament and was appointed to several official positions in the Queen's Household. He was an amateur photographer and several of his photographs are in the Royal Collection. He was also a musical composer and wrote a piece called "The Spirit of the Ball".
In 1861 at the age of 34 he married Ursula, widow of the 1st Baron Londesborough and daughter of Vice-Admiral Charles Orlando Bridgeman. The couple had two children. The Fitzgeralds entertained at Oakley Court, their guests including
Napoléon, Prince Imperial of France and Lilly Langtry. Lady Augusta Fane in her memoirs recalls a water party held at Oakley Court where Lilly Langtry was present. Otho died in 1882 and his wife Ursula died a year later. Oakley Court was rented out for the next ten years and then in 1894 John Lewis Phipps bought the house.
John Lewis Phipps
John Lewis Phipps was born in 1872 in London. His father was Richard Leckonby Hothersal Phipps of Leighton House in Westbury, Wiltshire. His grandfather was John Lewis Phipps (1801-1870) a coffee merchant and Member of Parliament. In 1889 John's father died and he inherited the family fortune. When he bought Oakley House in 1894 he was only 22 years old. Two years before this he had married Mary Jane Davis and they had one son John Nigel Phipps who was born in 1893. The Phipps sold the house to Sir William Avery in 1908.
Sir William Avery Baronet
William Bielby Avery was born in 1854 in Birmingham He was a member of a dynasty of
steelyard
The Steelyard, from the Middle Low German (sample yard), was the main trading base () of the Hanseatic League in London during the 15th and 16th centuries.
Location
The Steelyard was located on the north bank of the Thames by the outflow o ...
and scale makers whose business,
W & T Avery, manufactured weighing machines.
[Anita McConnell, ''Avery, Thomas (1813–1894)'', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, May 2005] In 1881 he assumed control of the company with his brother and they further developed the company and invented improvements to the machines. In 1891 he retired as managing director but retained a seat on the Board. He was on the board of directors of
A Darracq and Company (1905) and Commonwealth Oil Corporation of Australia and other major businesses. He became a philatelist and had a celebrated stamp collection. His first wife Anna Louisa Avery died in 1902 and he married Suzanna Mathilde Crets in Paris in the same year. In 1906 “The Gardener’s Chronicle” published an article about the Oakley Court garden which can be seen
here William died in 1908 and Lady Avery remarried in 1911. The house was rented for several years and then in 1916 was put on the market. The property was bought by Ernest Oliver.
Film set
In August 1949, Oakley Court became home to the British film production company
Hammer Films
A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nails into wood, to shape metal (as wi ...
. Hammer shot five films there, including ''The Man in Black'' and ''The Lady Craved Excitement'', before moving to the adjacent Down Place - what subsequently became
Bray Studios - the following year. While the bulk of Hammer's best known horror movies were filmed at Bray in the late 1950s and early '60s, the studio continued to make occasional use of Oakley Court as an exterior location, for example in ''
The Brides of Dracula'' (1962), ''
The Reptile'' (1966), and ''
The Plague of the Zombies'' (1966). Other films shot there over the years include the William Castle horror-comedy ''
The Old Dark House'' (1963); ''Witchcraft'' (1964); ''
And Now the Screaming Starts!'' (1973); the cult independent horror film ''
Vampyres
A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mi ...
'' (1974); the mystery farce ''
Murder by Death'' (1976); and the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore comedy, ''
The Hound of the Baskervilles'' (1978).
Freddie Francis was inspired by Oakley Court's exteriors and long wished to set a film there; his ''
Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly
''Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly'', released as ''Girly'' outside the United Kingdom, is a 1970 British horror-comedy film. The film originated as a dream project for renowned cinematographer-turned-director Freddie Francis, who wanted the oppor ...
'' (1970) was written specially to take advantage of the unique landscaping and architecture. It was used as the location for Dr. Frank N. Furter's castle (called The Frankenstein Place) in ''
The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' (1975). During filming, actress
Susan Sarandon, who played Janet Weiss, came down with pneumonia because neither Oakley Court or Bray Studios had heating or bathrooms, because, at the time, Oakley Court was in horrible condition. In 1995, it was featured as the "Laxton Grange Hotel" in the British television series ''
Pie in the Sky'' starring
Richard Griffiths
Richard Thomas Griffiths (31 July 1947 – 28 March 2013) was an English actor of film, television, and stage. For his performance in the stage play ''The History Boys'', Griffiths won a Tony Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, the Drama Desk Aw ...
. On many web resources, it is erroneously credited as being
St Trinian's School
''St Trinian's'' is a British gag cartoon comic strip series, created and drawn by Ronald Searle from 1946 until 1952. The cartoons all centre on a boarding school for girls, where the teachers are sadists and the girls are juvenile delinquents. ...
in the original St Trinian's film series, but a comparison between the films and the actual building show a quite different architecture and overall design:
Easneye House in Hertfordshire. Historical notes available from the hotel, however, indicate that some parts of the St Trinian films were filmed in the grounds, for example ''
The Wildcats of St Trinian's'' (1980).
References
{{Reflist, 30em
External links
Royal Berkshire History: Oakley CourtOakley Court Hotel
Bray, Berkshire
Buildings and structures in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead
Buildings and structures on the River Thames
Country houses in Berkshire
Gothic Revival architecture in Berkshire
Grade II* listed buildings in Berkshire
Grade II* listed houses
Hotels in Berkshire
Houses completed in 1859
Country house hotels