Oakley Court, Berkshire, England

Remarkably little is known about the property despite the fact that it was built over 120 years ago. Oakley Court is situated along a stretch of the Thames known as Water Oakley. It was first shown on maps around 1800 and the name appears to originate from Cornish Breton in which it appears as "Warhta Eog Lee" — The Upper Salmon Place.

The Court was originally built in 1859 for Sir Richard Hall Say and legend has it that he built it in the style of a French Chateau to comfort his homesick young French wife. In 1880 Oakley Court was sold to Lord Otto Fitzgerald, then to a John Lewis Phipps and in 1908 to Sir William Avery of Avery Scales. In 1919, Mr Ernest Olivier purchased the property together with 50 acres of Berkshire woodland for the sum of £27,000. He was a very eccentric character who frequently entertained foreign diplomats and as a courteous gesture flew the flag of the nation they represented on the original flag pole which still stands today. It is believed that the Court was used during the last war as the English Headquarters for the French resistance and President De Gaulle is reputed to have stayed in one of the Mansion bedrooms.

In 1955, Bray Studios moved to Down Place, just next door to Oakley Court. After Mr Olivier's death in 1965 the Court lay uninhabited. For the next 14 years it became an ideal setting for many of the films made by Southern Pictures. During this period, some 200 films were made in and around the property, most notable were the St. Trinian's series, The Rocky Horror Show, Half a Sixpence starring Tommy Steele, Murder by Death starring Peter Sellers and perhaps most famous of all were the Hammer House Productions, notably Dracula. When the Dracula films were made at Oakley Court, directors obtained an eerie effect by using only candles to light the entire Court.

In 1979 conversion began at Oakley Court. Wherever possible, the furniture and plaster was restored and this is particularly noticeable in the Mansion itself. Our billiard table is 300 years old and the plastering in the Drawing Room is all original. Two extensions have been built onto the Mansion, the Riverside and Garden Wings. Today these house most of our bedrooms, although there are 6 carefully restored suites in the main Mansion.

Now a prestige hotel, although at the time of filming The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Oakley Court was a dilapidated shell. The crew had to work around buckets catching the rainwater from the holes in the roof and tread carefully on the old rotting timbers. It is said that most of the cast caught very bad colds during filming.

The house was originally built in 1859 for Sir Richard Hall Say. He had married a young French woman and some say that to make her feel less homesick the house was constructed in a classic French Chateau style.

In 1919, Mr. Ernest Olivier purchased the house and fifty acres of woodland for Twenty Seven Thousand Pounds and after his death in 1965 the property stood empty, making it an ideal setting for many films from the nearby Bray Studios. Over 200 films were made that featured the house or it's grounds. As well as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, many of the Hammer House of Horror and the St.Trinians films were made at Oakley Court. Here's a few to start you off: The House in Nightmare Park, The Reptile, Dracula and Half a Sixpence.

The conversion of Oakley Court began in 1979, adding two new wings to house most of the Hotel's bedrooms, although six restored suites are still available in the main building. As much of the original furniture and plaster as possible was restored to it's former splendour. On 7th November, 1981, after two years of building and restoration, and Five Million Pounds spent on the property, Oakley Court Hotel opened for business.

A number of ghostly hooded figures have been seen walking the grounds of Oakley Court

Remarkably little is known about the property despite the fact that it was built over 120 years ago. Oakley Court is situated along a stretch of the river Thames known as Water Oakley. It was first shown on maps around 1800 and the name appears to originate from Cornish Breton in which it appears as “Warhta Eog Lee” — The Upper Salmon Place.

The Court was originally built in 1859 for Sir Richard Hall Say and legend has it that he built it in the style of a French Chateau to comfort his homesick young French wife.

The court has a very reputation for being ‘evil’, and a number of accidental drownings both in the building and outside of it have occurred over the past thirty years. One such tragic story involves that of a woman named Penelope Gallerneault.

Mrs Penelope Gallerneault, 26, lived in a flat in the Victorian-Gothic country house of Oakley Court,.The family were warned by friends before they moved in that the place was spooky and had previous history of accidents involving death by drowning. In the three years they were there, she and her husband and children suffered many tragedies.

The horror began in the summer of 1972. ‘I started to see people walking in the grounds wearing hoods,’ she says. In December her two-year-old son, William, died. Mrs Gallerneault was running him a bath when the phone went.

When she returned he was floating in the water. ‘I realize that many people might try to blame me for being careless, but that is just not the case.’ A second tragedy struck the family when her second son Edward, who was just two, was left in his playpen in the grounds. Somehow he got out, toddled down to the river, fell in and drowned.

Mrs Gallerneault said, ‘The house has an aura of evil and I could never go back there. The Rev. Sebastian Jones, curate of St Michael’s Church, Bray, added: ‘Oakley Court is definitely “spooky” and I would not want to stay there myself. Evil can generate evil, and the grounds would be an ideal place to practise black magic’ The police, called in at every stage, are mystified too.

A senior policeman said: ‘There have been some strange happenings at the house, which have never been explained. We made regular patrols after complaints about witches, and things seem to have quietened down now.

In the 1950s, the place was left derelict for many years. The atmosphere around the building apparently became so oppressive that it caused a number of people to commit suicide in the Thames.