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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Upton House, Oxfordshire.

Bog Garden


Entrance Front

The National Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill and today is probably the world’s leading conservation body with hundreds of houses under its steward ship as well as 700 miles of coastline and many acres of important landscape in England & Wales. The houses and attractions open to the public are not tourist attractions but are buildings, lands and monuments which are conserved or restored in various degrees and are owned in trust by 3.4 M members. As such they provide some wonderful venues for visitors which give a real insight into the life of England away from the well trod tourist traps.


Garden Front

One such place is Upton House the house of Walter Samuel, Viscount Bearstead, the Chairman of Shell Oil and son of its founder. In the 1930's he was one of the richest men in the world and this was his weekend house bought to entertain and go hunting and remodeled to house the art collection begun by his father. It is on the edge of the Cotswold’s, between Banbury and Stratford-upon-Avon. If going by car go from either junction 11 or junction 12 on the M40 and you will pick up the distinctive brown direction signs with the Nation Trusts oak leaf symbol. This is a delightful corner of Oxfordshire with picture postcard villages with hugely attractive thatched cottages with the thatch contrasting with the reddish / brown local Hornton stone.




The approach to Upton House is unassuming with little hint of what is beyond other than the rather austere North Front in the same reddish local stone. One of the National Trust's most important art collections can be found in this house. Today you can imagine you are joining the guests of Lord and Lady Bearsted and experience the weekend house party of a 1930s millionaire. You are surrounded by the internationally important art and porcelain collections. The stunning gardens being returned to their 1930s heyday consist of a sweeping lawn, giving way to a series of terraces and herbaceous borders leading to a kitchen garden, tranquil water garden and the National Collection of Asters.









Built in about 1695 for Sir Rushout Cullen, Upton is a long low house built of local yellow sandstone. Perhaps uniquely among country houses owned by the National Trust it was acquired almost entirely for its art collection and it is presented more as an art gallery than a private home. Purchased and remodeled in 1927–29 by Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted, who was Chairman of Shell, 1921–46, and son of the company's founder. Upton contains his outstanding collection of English and continental Old Master paintings over three floors, including works by Hogarth, Stubbs, Romney, Canaletto, Brueghel and El Greco; Brussels tapestries; French Sèvres porcelain; Chelsea and Derby figures and 18th-century furniture.





Lord Bearsted, 1922. Portrait of Marcus Samuel, Lord Bearsted, British businessman and founder of the Shell Transport and Trading Company.









Gravestone of Marcus Samuel Bearsted, founder of the Shell Oil Company, United Synagogue Willesden Cemetery, Willesden, London.







The second viscount donated it to the National Trust in 1948 with the collection and an endowment and the proviso that it is displayed as a family house, not as a museum. Indeed, the family lived here until 1988 and still owns the extensive grounds where they live in a modern house. The house was remodeled in the late 1920’s and the combined Library, double height Picture Room, Art Gallery and Billiards’ Room combines both a sense of grandeur and an English gentleman’s club atmosphere. The other “Gosford Park” style feature is the separate luggage lobby where visitor’s belongings would be taken up the backstairs to their bedrooms whilst they were no doubt welcomed with agreeable cocktails!







The collection was assembled by Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted who owed his fortune to the fact that his father Marcus Samuel was the founder of the oil company Shell Transport & Trading. He acquired Upton in 1927 and gifted it to the National Trust in 1948. The collection includes English and Continental old masters by artists such as George Stubbs, Jan Steen, Melchior de Hondecoeter, William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, El Greco, Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, Tintoretto, Rogier van der Weyden and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.



There is also a collection of English porcelain, including Chelsea, Derby, Bow and Worcester, and some French Sèvres porcelain. The house also contains an art deco bathroom and a collection of early Shell advertising posters.











Upstairs there are a number of suites decorated in the Art Deco style including Lady Bearsted's restored bedroom and Art Deco bathroom which is covered in aluminum leaf. Also upstairs there is an exhibition of paintings and publicity posters commissioned by Shell during Viscount Bearsted's chairmanship; In the 20’s to 50’s Shell under Jack Boddington and London Transport under Frank Pick commissioned some of the most memorable advertising seen in Britain. As well as posters and billboards with slogans such “You’re going well, you’re going Shell”. As well as the posters the company produced post cards, maps and the Shell Guide’s which are now valuable collectors’ items. They form a testament to the great creativity in graphic design and art in the 20s and 30s as well as documenting a simpler age when the car was seen as a form of liberation!




Garden Stairs

Standing on the terrace on the South Front there is little hint of the glories beyond looking at what appears to be a ha-ha framed on one side with majestic Cedars of Lebanon planted in 1700 on the right and ancient yews framing an Alpine garden on the left. As you approach the bank the ground falls away and there below you is the unusual centre piece – a wonderful Kitchen garden framed by 2 remaining out of 4 “stew lakes” which provided fresh fish for the house. The garden is very fine, with lawns, terraces, orchard, herbaceous borders, kitchen garden, ornamental pools and an interesting 1930s water garden, together with the National Collection of Asters. The kitchen gardens provide a wonderful range of produce with, for instance, 6 types of apple tree. This and the other variety of plants, fruits and flowers were not designed to impress but rather to ensure fresh produce was available for as long as possible. The apples would have different ripening and storage times to ensure as long a season as possible.

Stew Lake

The 31 acres of gardens are full of character. Terraces linked by an Italianate balustraded stairway added in the 1930s overlook a formal lake. There is a wilderness-like bog garden in a natural amphitheatre ringed by woods to the west of the house. A classical temple by Sanderson Miller is built above a larger lake. The mellow brick wall of the 17th century kitchen garden still has carries espaliered fruit trees.


Mirror Pool

There is a fine cafeteria in one of the pavilions which serves a simple range of good fresh food and a visitor shop which serves a good range of gifts, local foods and garden plants grown in the grounds and greenhouses. All in all this has much to offer as a visitor destination with a fine English as it would have appeared in the 20s and 30s, a wonderful collection of art and artifacts and attractive historic gardens to enjoy with an array of colours and interest throughout the seasons.



Location: Near Banbury, Oxfordshire.







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