The Great House at Sonning is a hotel and restaurant with a riverside garden on the River Thames near Sonning Bridge at Sonning, Berkshire, England. It is possible for patrons to moor along the towpath running past the hotel on the river.
It was formerly a public house, known as the White Hart because King Richard II's wife, Isabella of Valois was kept prisoner at the Bishop's Palace in the village after his death. In 1989, the original White Hart was combined with The Red House, previously a private home on Lee's Hill where the dramatist Sir Terence Rattigan resided during 1945–47, to become The Great House.
On the opposite side of the road are Deanery Garden and St Andrew's Church. Close by, just over Sonning Bridge, is The Mill at Sonning, now a dinner theatre. On the opposite Oxfordshire bank of the Thames is another riverside hotel and restaurant, The French Horn.
Famous quotes containing the word house:
“Perchance the time will come when every house even will have not only its sleeping-rooms, and dining-room, and talking-room or parlor, but its thinking-room also, and the architects will put it into their plans. Let it be furnished and ornamented with whatever conduces to serious and creative thought. I should not object to the holy water, or any other simple symbol, if it were consecrated by the imagination of the worshipers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)