The unique aspect of Guy's Cliffe is that it's continuous occupation is grounded in a myth of epic proportions. Sir Guy was a Saxon hero, who killed the Dun Cow close to Dunchurch and other monsters, he returned from his considerable adventures as a knight from the Holy Land to become a hermit in the caves in the sandstone bluff above the River Avon, away from his wife who was the Lady Felice of Warwick.
This gallant early knight devoted the remaining years of his life to meditation and the contemplation of the Christian faith. His wife remained ignorant of his unannounced presence so close and just before Guy died, he revealed his true identity to his lady who, overcome by grief, threw herself from the cliff where her husband had lived for so many years her body was buried next to his in the cave of Guy's Cliffe. It is said that her ghost, distraught with grief, still haunts the site.
Earl Guy was only following an old tradition: for, apparently Guy's Cliffe was a place of religious retirement four or five centuries before the time of this Earl of Warwick. A hermitage was founded on the site of Guy's last days, and monks inhabited the cave dwellings until the fifteenth century.
A chapel was built next to the caves, and a statue of Sir Guy was put up in memory of the Christian hero, this can still be seen inside the chapel where we hold our meetings.
Guy's Cliffe House has been described as the "most beautiful abandoned Stately home in England"[1]. It exudes an unearthly atmosphere, which, as you approach only increases. It was built in and rises from the living rock of the sandstone cliff, and the edges between house, rock and foliage are indistinct. Some of the lower rooms are excavated from the rock. There is a creative and spiritual quality to Guy's Cliffe, which, once you have discovered the religious and historic aspects that are contained in this site, will enchant you.
The house and the mill are mentioned in the Doomsday Book, the mill had been a functioning mill for two hundred years before the Doomsday census, hence the name 'Saxon Mill'. In the fifteenth century the house went into the hands of the Greatheed family, who were connected to the House of Ernsby.
The house became a mansion when it went into the hands of the brother of the Duke of Northumberland in 1846. The Percy family married with the Heber family, who lived in the next estate, and so extended the influence of Guy's Cliffe House in the Victorian era. The Heber-Percys lived in the house until 1945, when after several attempts to fix the roof, they decided to not repair it, and sold the contents in a grand auction.
"In 1955 the house was purchased by Aldwyn Porter, who leased the chapel to local Freemasons, who still use it today, and have maintained this part of the building in relatively good condition"[1]. The house, however, has had a rougher time, left open to the elements, it is clearly in a gradual state of decay and decline, especially as the later brickwork and thin walls are not, in the absence of a roof, very strong. An episode of Sherlock Holmes, "The Last Vampire", was filmed there in 1992, during which the house was further damaged by fire. The house was set ablaze for the first scene of the film, which cannot have had a salutary effect on either the structure or any surviving internal features
Source [1]:Geoffrey Tuck. (1994) Warwickshire Country Houses, ISBN 0850338689
