Owlpen Manor Houses

OWLPEN has long been recognised as one of England's most romantic early manor houses. The Tudor manor (1450-1616) stands with its early formal garden of magnificent yews at the centre of a clutch of medieval landmark buildings. Many are now adapted as quite exceptional award-winning Cotswold holiday cottages.

The Owlpen estate, steeped in 900 years of history, forms its own remote and picturesque wooded valley under the edge of the Cotswold hills in the south-west of England.

The licensed Cyder House is an atmospheric medieval restaurant set at the heart of the estate. It serves home-cooked gourmet meals and light lunches in the summer with an emphasis on the fresh produce of the working farm and garden.

The Mander family welcome you to Owlpen to experience this beautiful and dreamy valley, survivor from a bygone age, first hand and at leisure. We hope these pages will give you some flavour of the experience of Owlpen, long admired as "the jewel of the Cotswolds", based on the family motto: Vive bene, "live well".

Magnificent Tudor Great Hall. Jacobean Solar/Parlour wing dated 1616.

Elegant early Georgian Little Parlour and doorcase remodelled in 1719.

The Great Chamber contains unique painted cloth wall-hangings with scenes from the life of Joseph and his brothers, dated about 1700.

Among the ghosts recorded at Owlpen is that of Queen Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI, who stayed at Owlpen in May 1471, on her way to defeat at the Battle of Tewkesbury in the Wars of the Roses. She is said to keep returning to the house where she spent her last happy night before her defeat, exile and widowhood.

Inside the manor house are Mander family collections, including furniture, textiles and pictures. There is a collection of Cotswold Arts and Crafts furniture and associated items by Sidney Barnsley, Norman Jewson and Ernest Gimson, among others. Panelling and Tudor wall-paintings.

The manor house was repaired by the outstanding Cotswold Arts and Crafts architect Norman Jewson in 1926, after it had become a Sleeping Beauty, dwarfed behind enormous yews and uninhabited for over 100 years.