Fawley Court (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Fowley, Divine Mercy College

In the civil parish of Fawley.
In the historic county of Buckinghamshire.
Modern Authority of Buckinghamshire.
1974 county of Buckinghamshire.
Medieval County of Buckinghamshire.

OS Map Grid Reference: SU76528421
Latitude 51.55163° Longitude -0.89776°

Fawley Court has been described as a Fortified Manor House although is doubtful that it was such.

There are masonry footings remains.

This is a Grade 2* listed building protected by law*.

Description

A country house constructed in 1684, reputed to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, although this is unproven. It was altered in the late 18th and 19th centuries and converted into a boarding school after 1953. The school closed in 1986 and the house was used as a retreat and conference centre under the ownership of a Roman Catholic congregation of priests, the Marian Fathers. In 2009 the house was sold into private hands. It is two storeyed and H-shaped in plan, built of brick and stone with a hipped tiled roof. The present house stands on the site of an earlier manor house, possibly dating back to the 12th century and possibly fortified. (PastScape)

Comments

Foundations of fortified house said to lie under later building. There is a C12 doorway reset in a dairy which, even if from an ecclesiastical building as suggested by the VCH, implies this was the manorial centre from that date, despite being some distance from the parish church. 200 acres of deer park and the asserted right to fishing in the adjacent Thames suggest the reason for unusual location. The tenurial history, held for a knights fee by a sub tenant, is not inconsistent with a small fortified manor house but there does not seem to be any real evidence of medieval fortification here. The house was attacked in the Civil War, which might weakly suggest there was something defensive about it then, but has been completely rebuilt and the landscape remodelled so that not even a moat survives.

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1125740
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 245262.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) 0193901000.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Wikipedia entry
Books
- Cooper, Nicholas, 1999, Houses of the Gentry, 1480-1680 (Yale University Press) p. 313
  Pevsner, Nikolaus and Elizabeth Williamson with Geoffrey K Brandwood, 1994, Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire (Harmondsworth) p. 134-5
  Page, Wm (ed), 1925, VCH Buckinghamshire Vol. 3 p. 38 online transcription
  RCHME, 1913, An inventory of the historical monuments in Buckinghamshire Vol. 2 (north) p. 27-8 online copy
  Burn, J.S., 1861, History of Henley on Thames p. 306-8
  Langley, Thomas, 1797, History and Antiquities of the Hundred of Desborough p. 192-4 (London) online copy
Periodical Articles
- Tyack, Geoffrey, 1982, 'The Freemans of Fawley and their Buildings' Records of Buckinghamshire Vol. 24 (post-medieval history) p. 130-43

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The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

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Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

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*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

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