Thames Valley Country Houses

Enjoy guided tours of two little known country houses in a quiet corner of the Thames valley.

Explore Grade I Mapledurham House, an Elizabethan manor house, built from 1585 in the classic Elizabethan E-shape, by Sir Richard Blount. The house remains in the Blount-Eyston family and includes a late 18th century chapel built in the Strawberry Hill Gothic style for the recusant Roman Catholic owners of the house. The house contains several priest holes, some only recently discovered. Prior to the Catholic emancipation, the owners would hide priests and secretly celebrate Mass with a makeshift altar hidden inside a writing desk. Anne of Denmark stayed at Mapledurham in August 1612 as a guest of Sir Richard, before meeting James VI at nearby Woodstock Palace. The poet Alexander Pope was a frequent visitor to the house as he was enamoured of Teresa and Martha Blount. The house and surrounding village have been used for several TV series including Midsomer Murders and the estate covers much of the village including Mapledurham Watermill and part of the church. 

Later discover Remenham Court, a Grade II house built around 1830 with a painted stucco façade and a slate hipped roof. Our tour will focus on the history of the house and the change of ownership following a sale at auction by the executors of Edmund Gardiner in 1845. The accompanying documentation at the time suggests that the house may have had earlier origins. The house is attractively situated and has interesting windows on the ground floor including three-light sashes, French casements and an arched window all covered by an Ionic veranda on outer piers and central columns. The house retains its original charm with a wonderful backdrop of gardens and grounds stretching out to the natural beauty and tranquillity of the River Thames.

Tickets £82 including a two-course lunch at the Packhorse Inn, Mapledurham 

Lunch options to be made available to attendees in March

Mapledurham House image © John of Reading, CC BY-SA 4.0 <;, via Wikimedia Commons