Audleys Wood has always been a much loved home. Despite the relative youth of the mansion, the estate has been inhabited for hundreds of years.

Mentioned in the Doomsday Book, in which it’s called Oddele, the estate had been renamed Odlease by the late 16th Century.

By 1882, just before the building of the present mansion, the Ordnance Survey Map marked the area as Odley’s Copse. Created in the Gothic Renaissance style, Audleys Wood was built in the mid-1880s for Sir George Bradshaw, whose wealth and fame came from the Railway Guide, which carried his name. A man at the forefront of information technology at the time.

In 1889, Henry Adolphus Simonds bought the estate for himself and his wife. Simonds was a famous local brewer, whose company H&G Simonds of Reading had been established for over 100 years. Childless, but determined to secure the future of his company, Henry approached his elder brother Frederick, who had emigrated to America in the 1840s. There Frederick had married Sophie de Luze, daughter of the Swiss Consul in New York and a direct descendant of the noble De Luze family whose name is still famous among the wine shippers of Bordeaux.

Henry invited the younger son of Frederick and Sophie to return to England to take up a position with the company – and subsequently inherit it. During the Second World War, the Simonds family took a house closer to the Reading brewery, letting Audleys Wood to Lord Camrose – Editor and Proprietor of The Daily Telegraph – whose nearby estate, Hackwood House and Park, had become a Canadian military hospital.

As a reminder of the many great statesmen who visited Audleys Wood during this time, there is always a copy of The Daily Telegraph in the lounge. In the autumn of 1945, both families returned to their respective homes. Five years later, Eric Simonds put the estate up for sale, finding a convenient buyer in Lord Camrose. Audleys Wood was splendidly and sensitively converted into a hotel in 1989.