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:
“Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, when every voice is raised for a new road or another statute or a subscription of stock; for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry; for a new house or a larger business; for a political party, or the division of an estate;Mwill you not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and principles not marketable or perishable?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)