[1] The main building sits five times its length away from the river, 600m along the 2112m Henley Royal Regatta course and has a private promenade covering approximately half of the course, [2]

Under Edward the Confessor in 1065 the Domesday Book notes Earl Tosti held this land as the manor of Fawley, connected with the village itself which sits atop the hill behind.

In 1616, Fawley was sold to Sir James Whitelocke, a judge who also bought adjoining smaller Phyllis Court and larger Henley Park.

On his death in 1632 Fawley passed to his son, Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, who was a parliamentarian and judge who also owned much land in Remenham.

During the Civil War, Fawley was the scene of fighting between the Roundheads and Royalist troops commanded by Prince Rupert of the Rhine.

Since Bulstrode Whitelocke was a Parliament supporter, Royalist soldiers were quartered in the house under Sir John Byron having ransacked it in 1642.

After the Restoration of the Monarchy Bulstrode gave the damaged house to his son James Whitelocke, who, having failed to repair it, mortgaged it to William Freeman.

Its confident bold relief tempted Geoffrey Beard to ascribe it to London plasterer William Parker, whose comparable work at Denham Place is documented.

He was an early member of the Society of Antiquaries, built the Gothic folly in the grounds and the Freeman family mausoleum in the village based on the design of the tomb of Caecilla Metella in Rome.

[8] One of two drawings securely attributed to Wyatt that appeared at a Christie's auction, 30 November 1983, is for the interior of the island temple, which was the earliest essay in England of an "Etruscan" style,[9] its pale green walls painted as if hung with "antique" black and terracotta figured tablets and medallions.

Drawings by James Wyatt's brother Samuel[10] suggested to Eileen Harris that he was responsible for the barn with an apsidal end, which survives (with some nineteenth-century changes) at Fawley.

In 1953 the house and surrounding grounds with an exceptional river frontage on the Thames were purchased by the British province of the Polish Congregation of Marian Fathers, in answer to the demand from the post World War II newly settled Polish community, for use as an independent educational establishment known as, Divine Mercy College and as a religious house.

The enterprise was in straitened financial circumstances from the start and, as a charitable institution, relied heavily on public support to build the residential accommodation for the pupils and to keep it running.

It was intended for boys of Polish descent but accepted local children as well as those from overseas, e.g. from Ghana, Mauritius and Hong Kong.

At its peak the school catered for 150 boys of 9 to 19 years of age and offered a rounded education including university entrance exams.

The school finally closed in 1986 due to falling rolls of students of Polish origin, and the Marian Fathers converted Fawley Court into a 'Retreat and Conference Centre'.

[18] The Jarzębowski collection also contained: an armoury of the 16th–19th centuries of European, Asian and Far Eastern provenance, other militaria ranging from the last Polish uprising to World War II, French, Portuguese and Polish tapestries of the 16th-18th centuries, Italian Baroque paintings, drawings, including by Annibale Carracci, sacred art including icons, coins, medals and a notable philatelic collection.

[21] The school and the museum also served for over half a century as a popular meeting place on feast days for the wider Polish community.

Indeed, it became a destination for the Polish diaspora in that it led Prince Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł (husband of Lee Bouvier-Radziwill, younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) to fund the erection of St. Anne's church in the grounds and a burial place for his mother and other family members.