Upton Grey

Coordinates: 51°13′43″N 1°00′03″W / 51.2286°N 1.0008°W / 51.2286; -1.0008

Upton Grey is a village and civil parish in Hampshire, England.

History

Roman times

The village is on the line of an ancient Roman road, the Chichester to Silchester Way.

Norman times

The Grey derives from the years when the village was owned by the de Grey family and was used to differentiate the village from the many other Uptons.

Elizabethan times

The Manor House dates from Elizabethan times when the Matthew family lived there. The famous Elizabethan poet, George Puttenham, lived at Herriard House but also had a farm at Upton Grey. It was there that he kept his seventeen-year-old sex slave whom he had kidnapped in London. Eventually she was released when Puttenham's long suffering wife discovered her existence.

Buildings

Manor House

Charles Holme purchased several houses and a great deal of the surrounding land in Upton Grey. The Old Manor House, which he rented to tenants for the rest of his life, was in fragile condition. Holme then commissioned a local architect Ernest Newton to refurbish it, keeping many of the original timbers. Today's Edwardian decoration encloses oak rooms, a 16th-century staircase and original roof timbers. Newton's house was finished in 1907. Gertrude Jekyll created a four and a half acre garden around it.