The oldest parts of the building at Great Milton date from the 13th century. It was called Milton House or the Great House until the chef Raymond Blanc took it over in 1984 and gave it its present name.
The last private owner was the Hon. David Bewick-Copley (1929 to 1982), who inherited the title Lord Cromwell in 1966 and died in a riding accident. When his widow decided to sell, odd things began. According to Edward Gill, Curiosities of Oxfordshire (1995), as quoted by Dark Oxfordshire, the curtains opened and the bed was turned down by unseen hands in the master bedroom, and there were marks in the bath and shower she could not account for.
Lady Cromwell concluded that her late husband disliked the idea of selling. She called in a priest to cleanse the house. Gill gives no detail of the rite, and no further reports are recorded. The source is a single book, and the pin is at village level rather than the hotel itself.
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