Manor
Great Tew was settled in the Anglo-Saxon era. Ælfric of Abingdon held the manor of Great Tew by 990 and became Archbishop of Canterbury in 995. Ælfric died in 1005, leaving Great Tew to Saint Alban's Abbey. In 1049–52 the abbey leased Great Tew:
Leofstan, abbot, and St Albans Abbey, to Tova, widow of Wihtric, in return for 3 marks of gold and an annual render of honey; lease, for her lifetime and that of her son, Godwine, of land at Cyrictiwa, with reversion to St Albans.
In Old English the toponym Cyrictiwa means "Church Tew", distinguishing the village from neighbouring Little Tew which lacked its own church, and Nether Worton which seems not to have had its own chapel until the 12th century.
William the Conqueror granted the manor to his step-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and it was recorded amongst Odo's estates in the Domesday Book in 1086.
Tew Great Park was created before the latter part of the 16th century.
Sir Lawrence Tanfield, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, bought Great Tew estate in 1611 from Edward Rainsford. He deprived the villagers of timber, causing some of the cottages to fall into disrepair. Tanfield enclosed part of Great Tew's lands in 1622. However, most of the parish's common lands were not enclosed until Parliament passed an Enclosure Act for Great Tew in 1767.
After Tanfield died in 1626, followed by his wife Elizabeth in 1629, Great Tew passed to his young son-in-law Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland.
In the 1630s Lucius gathered together the Great Tew circle of writers and scholars, including Abraham Cowley, Ben Jonson and Edmund Waller. During the English Civil War the young Viscount fought on the Royalist side and was killed in 1643 at the First Battle of Newbury. Great Tew remained in the Cary family until the death of Anthony Cary, 5th Viscount of Falkland in 1694.
Viscount Cary lived in a large manor house which seems to have been built in or before the early part of the 17th century and seems to have been extended in the latter part of the 17th century. It was demolished in about 1800 (see below) but outlying structures from about 1700 including its stables, dovecote and stone gatepiers survive.
In 1780 and 1793 Great Tew estate was bought by George Stratton, who had made a fortune in the East India Company. He died in March 1800 and was succeeded by his son George Frederick Stratton. The manor house had evidently fallen into disrepair, as the Strattons lived in a smaller Georgian dower house slightly to the south of it and had the manor house demolished in about 1803. In 1808 George Frederick Stratton engaged the Scots botanist and garden designer John Loudon, who laid out north and south drives in Great Tew Park and planted ornamental trees in and around the village, which today enhance its picturesque appearance.
In 1815–16 Matthew Robinson Boulton, the son of the manufacturer Matthew Boulton of Soho, Birmingham, bought Great Tew Estate. In 1825 Boulton added a Gothic Revival library to the east end of the house, and in the middle of the 19th century the Boulton family had a large Tudor style section designed by F.S. Waller added to the west end. Great Tew remained with the Boulton family until M.E. Boulton died without heirs in 1914.
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