Grays Court

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Grays Court 2002.

Grays Court is a country house in the village of Rotherfield Grays at the south end of the Chiltern Hills near Henley-on-Thames in the English county of Oxfordshire . The Tudor house, set in gardens, is owned by the National Trust and is open to the public.

William Paul Esq. of Bray (1673-1711), portrait by John Closterman . His father James bought Grey's Court in 1688.

Overview

The name of the country house is derived from an old connection to the Gray family , descendants of the Norman knight Anchetil de Greye . The estate and manor of Rotherfield Grays on which Grays Court lies is explicitly mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.

The mostly Tudor style house has a courtyard and gardens. In the enclosed gardens you will find old-fashioned roses and wisteria , an ornamental vegetable garden, a lawn maze (grass with paved paths, consecrated by Archbishop Robert Runcie on October 12, 1981) and an ice house . In the gardens is a medieval defense tower from 1347, the only remnant of the earlier castle from which one can overlook the gardens and the surrounding landscape. There is also a treadmill in the gardens from the Tudor period, in which a donkey had to pump water up from a well.

The country house is equipped as a family home; inside there is exceptionally beautiful stucco work .

James Paul bought the house in 1688 and in 1724 it passed to Sir William Stapleton, 4th Baronet, through the widow's property of his son William's daughter . In 1937 Sir Felix Brunner and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Brunner-Irving , granddaughter of the Victorian-era actor-manager Henry Irving , bought the country house. In 1969 they bequeathed the property to the National Trust, although the family lived in the house until Lady Brunner's death in 2003.

watch TV

Grey's Court appeared in the 2012 episode of Downton Abbey when the Crawley family visited their property, which was called "Eryholme" in the movie. The house was used as a hunting lodge by the countess's deceased spouses. When Lord Grantham could no longer afford Downton Abbey, he and Cora discussed the possibility of the family moving there and renaming the property "Downton Place".

The house also appeared in the ITV series Agatha Christie's Poirot in 2013. In the film adaptation of Elephants Don't Forget , Grey's Court is the home of one of the people Ariadne Oliver visits while she is investigating the case. The episode aired on June 9, 2013.

The house was also used for exterior shots in an episode of Series 14 by Inspector Barnaby as Midsomer Priory .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ TripAdvisor: Grey's Court . Retrieved April 18, 2016.

Web links and sources

Commons : Grays Court  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 32 ′ 41.5 "  N , 0 ° 57 ′ 21.3"  W.