Greys Court

Greys Court

On a beautiful English summer’s day we travel this Sunday across rolling wooded Chiltern countryside through Chinnor and Watlington down towards where the hills hit the scenic part of the Thames River Valley. The object of our interest? The exquisite Tudor home of Greys Court with its equally beautiful setting and archetypical English garden set out as a series of garden rooms in the remains of an even more ancient medieval court of the de Grey family including a 13th century tower which you can ascend. It even has a James Bond connection having been owned for a while by Lady Evelyn Fleming, mother of Bond author Ian Fleming and his travel writer brother Peter.


The vista of the Chiltern Hills from the house





It is an intimate family home and peaceful estate set in the rolling hills of the Chilterns. This picturesque 16th-century mansion and tranquil gardens were home to the Brunner family until recent years. Reopening in 2010 after two years of closure for conservation work, the house exudes a welcoming atmosphere with a well-stocked kitchen and homely living rooms. The series of walled gardens is a colourful patchwork of interest set amid medieval ruins. Other buildings from earlier eras include the Great Tower from the 12th century and a rare Tudor donkey wheel, in use until the early 20th century.


Kitchen garden viewed from the Tower


Great Tower from the 12th century


The owl in the tower



Greys Court is a Tudor country house and associated gardens at the southern end of the Chiltern Hills at Rotherfield Greys, near Henley-on-Thames in the English county of Oxfordshire. It is owned by the National Trust and is open to the public. The name derives from an old connection to the Grey family, descendants of the Norman knight Anchetil de Greye. The estate or manor of Rotherfield Greys upon which Greys Court is situated is specifically mentioned in the Domesday Book.


Bluebells in the woods at Greys Court




Fresh organic produce from the kitchen garden

The mainly Tudor style house has a beautiful courtyard and gardens. The walled gardens are full of old-fashioned roses and wisteria, an ornamental vegetable garden, maze (laid to grass with brick paths, dedicated by Archbishop Robert Runcie on 12 October 1981) and ice house. Within the gardens is a medieval fortified tower of 1347, the only remains of the previous castle, giving extensive views of the gardens and surrounding countryside. Also to be found within the gardens is a Tudor wheelhouse, where a donkey operated a treadmill to haul water from a well.


The Dower House


The knot garden and Dower House


The Red Kite has been succesfully re-introduced to the Chilterns and this magnificent bird of prey can be viewed from the Tower

The delightful gardens have been created amongst the ruins with rambling old fashioned roses and wisteria. In the garden by the Great Tower is a pond filled with all sorts of wildlife including some Crested Newts swimming with the tadpoles, a rare species in the UK today. The ground floor of the house is open to the public and contains some outstanding 18th Century plasterwork. The out-buildings include a Tudor donkey wheel house and a 19th Century ice house.





The house itself has an interesting history, and the interior, with some outstanding 18th-century plasterwork, is still furnished as a family home. Greys Court was for a time owned by Sir Francis Knollys, treasurer to Elizabeth I, and jailer of Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1937 the house was bought by Sir Felix Brunner (1897- 1982) and his wife Lady Elizabeth Brunner, the grand-daughter of the Victorian era actor-manager Henry Irving. In 1969 they donated the property to the National Trust, with the family continuing to live in the house until the death of Lady Brunner in 2003.


Statue carved in ash-wood of Charles Taylor gardener at Greys Court from 1937 - 1955

'Framed like a picture by the rarest and stateliest of trees and erected amongst the remains of a vast old castellated mansion....'




This is how Mary Russell Mitford describes Greys Court in her book 'Recollections of a Literary Life'(1851). It is also surprising how little has changed at Greys since this was written nearly 150 years ago.The countryside has been tamed somewhat, but progress still remains locked out as you enter the grounds of the Estate. Immediately you are swept back through centuries of building, from times of great wealth and pleasure, to more sinister times when castellated towers and walls were built to make the life of those who lived within more secure.




Fountain in the kitchen garden with a poem by the Roman Poet Horace hoping for a good harvest



For such an old dwelling that has been constantly occupied, very little evidence has survived to tell us of its early history. In the Domesday Book, Anchetil de Greye is described as owning Redrefield (Rotherfield). The de Greys also had lands in Norfolk and this line of the Family gave us John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich and justicular of Ireland who died in 1214. He served in King John's retinue from 1198. John had him elected Archbishop of Canterbury after Hubert Walter's death in 1205, but this was quashed by Innocent III and Stephen Langton was elected. By the end of the 13th century the de Grey family were spread all over England with the Baron Grey's of Wilton and the Baron Grey's of Codnor being the senior members. They all went on to serve their King in Wales, Scotland and later in the Hundred Years War with France.

The de Grey family continued to own the estate of Rotherfield for more than four centuries. In 1239 Walter de Grey, Archbishop of York, brought Rotherfield from his Kinswoman, Eve de Grey, in order to give it to his brother Robert de Grey, ancestor of the Lords Grey of Rotherfield. This Robert's Grandson, Sir Robert de Grey fought for Edward I in Wales in 1282/3.




Kitchen Garden

The abiding impression you are left with is the one which convinced the Brunner’s to buy this property in 1937 – the incomparably peaceful, secluded and very beautiful setting in the Chiltern Hills with just the most wonderful vistas on all sides. The love and care they have shown to the house and gardens since is wonderful making for a very satisfying visit. There is so much athmosphere between the Tudor house with its adjoining outbuildings, the wonderful collection of gardens – a cherry garden, knot garden, rose garden, wisteria garden and abundant kitchen gardens and orchard – and its collections of buildings – The Dower House, The Medieval Tower, the cottages and the Donkey wheel it leaves an impression which is quintessentially English.





The Donkey wheel which supplied water to the house from a 200 ft deep well until 1914

Above all the National Trust have shown their sure hand and experience in historic buildings and surroundings. They have not attempted to over restore but to conserve. So the house and kitchen are much as Lady Brunner would have left it when she died at the age of 99 in 2003 and it has the athmosphere of a family house with their story very cleverly told in inscriptions on crockery plates and embroidered cushions. They have also resisted the temptation to manicure the gardens with the kitchen garden run as a working garden with the plants and produce for sale. We are very lucky to have so many special places like this conserved by the National Trust and generous benefactors whose legacy lives on such as the Brunner’s.


Plaque commemorating Greys Court being gifted to the National Trust in 1969 by Sir Felix and Lady Brunner


Greys Court.

Rotherfield Greys, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire RG9 4PG

Telephone: 01494 755564 (Infoline).



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