England · Still standing
Greys Court
Greys Court is a Tudor country house and gardens in the Chiltern Hills at Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire. The site includes a courtyard house largely built in the Tudor period, extensive walled gardens, and the surviving medieval fortified tower (c.1347). The property is Grade I listed and remains furnished as a family home; it is owned and open to the public under the National Trust.
First raised
1348
Its prime
1780
Today
Still standing
As it stood in 1780
What Greys Court looked like in its prime.
A mainly Tudor-style country house arranged around a cobbled courtyard, set against the southern Chiltern Hills and enclosed walled gardens. The grounds include an ornamental vegetable garden, old-fashioned rose beds and wisteria climbing the garden walls, and an ice-house sunk into the slope. A single medieval fortified tower (built c.1347) rises above the garden and surrounding countryside; a Tudor wheelhouse stands among the service buildings. Interiors include notable 18th-century decorative plasterwork.
Its story
The story of Greys Court.
Anchetil de Greye and the Manor of Redrefield
The Domesday survey of 1086 records Redrefield as the principal of six manors held by the Norman knight Anchetil de Greye, born around 1052 and still living after the survey was taken. He is the ancestor of the Grey family, and the name they carried is the name the place carries still.
A Founder Knight of the Garter, 1346
John de Grey, 1st Baron Grey de Rotherfield, was one of the original founder Knights of the Garter, and in 1346 he was granted a licence to crenellate his house at Rotherfield. In the same years he considerably enlarged the group of buildings on the site, adding a castle around 1347. Of that work only the fortified tower survives; the rest of the medieval castle has gone.
A Red Rose a Year: the Knollys Tenure, 1514–1642
The estate passed to the Crown in 1485, and in 1514 it was granted to Robert Knollys for an annual rental of a red rose. It stayed with the Knollys family until 1642, and it was during their tenure that the present house and its associated buildings were raised — Tudor work set around a courtyard.
Sir William Paul bought the house in 1686. It left the Paul family in 1724, carried by the dowry of his son William's daughter to Sir William Stapleton, 4th Baronet, and remained with the Stapletons for more than two hundred years.
The Brunners and the National Trust
Between 1935 and 1937 the house was occupied by Evelyn Fleming, mother of the author Ian Fleming. In 1937 Sir Felix Brunner and his wife Elizabeth, Lady Brunner — granddaughter of the Victorian actor-manager Sir Henry Irving — bought Greys Court from the Stapletons. The family gave the property to the National Trust in 1969, though Lady Brunner went on living there until her death in 2003. Archbishop Robert Runcie dedicated the garden maze on 12 October 1981.
Step inside
10 places to explore in 1780.
The record describes 10 distinct spots at Greys Court, including 3 interiors: fortified tower (interior), 18th-century plasterwork room, furnished family room. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Build Your Own Castle
Recreate Greys Court with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1780, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Castle Siege
Play Castle Siege at Greys Court.
A strategy game played on Greys Court’s real ground plan: the same surveyed walls shown in the archive below. Post your finite garrison on the battlements between assaults, then hold out as rams, siege towers, trebuchets and sappers arrive in ever-worse waves.
Sign in free to see the garrison muster. One castle costs 150 Clan Coins and is yours forever.
Sign in to take command →Whose castle
Clans who held Greys Court.
The families that held Greys Court for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Held by the Grey family from Anchetil de Greye's Domesday manor of 1086 until the estate passed to the Crown in 1485.
Knollys
Granted to Robert Knollys in 1514 for an annual rental of a red rose; held by the Knollys family until 1642.
Paul
Bought by Sir William Paul in 1686; passed via his granddaughter's dowry in 1724.
Stapleton
Held by the Stapleton baronets from 1724 until the sale of 1937.
Brunner
Held by Sir Felix and Lady Brunner from 1937; donated to the National Trust in 1969.
From the archive
Greys Court on paper: the measured plan and period views.
The survey plan and photographs below are the ground truth this page's reconstructions are checked against, drawn and photographed while the castle was still a working garrison. Every image is public-domain or openly licensed, with its source named.
GREYS COURT
1897 · J. D. Mackenzie, The Castles of England, vol. 1 (1897)
Public domain
Nearby
