Taplow Court

Taplow Court is a large Victorian house in the village of Taplow in Buckinghamshire, England, which has served as the national headquarters for the Soka Gakkai International of the United Kingdom (SGI-UK) since 1988.

The Taplow burial, a 7th-century Anglo-Saxon burial mound, is in the grounds of the house, near the parish church which is scenically positioned on a hill directly above Maidenhead Bridge and the town's riverside district. The mound was excavated in 1883 and a number of treasures were discovered, of quality of the early Saxon centuries surpassed only by Sutton Hoo in 1939.

There has been a manor house on the site since before the Norman Conquest in 1066. The manor was owned by the monks at Merton Priory until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It was then owned by the Hampson family in the 17th century, coming under attack during the English Civil War. Throughout the 18th century and through to the 1850s, Taplow Court was home to the Earl and Countess of Orkney who has also owned the adjacent Cliveden.

From 1852, Taplow Court became the home of the Grenfell family, purchased by Charles Pascoe Grenfell in August of that year. His family had it rebuilt in 1855, as it is dated, etched into the masonry. The exterior in an early Tudor style and the interior (with its central glazed hall rising the full height of the house) in Romanesque architecture. A listed building in the starting category of Grade II, it is built of red brick partly dressed in light stone and has a slate roof, has four storeys with 2 stone stringcourses carried round the building as drip moulds over the windows. It has a central projection with a porch. Here its heavy oak door is set in recess with a Norman style arch.

...
Wikipedia