[5] Evidence that the area has been inhabited since at least the Bronze Age includes a barrow about 1 mile (1.6 km) south of the village.

Under Roman rule, a villa connected to a road was located 1.5 miles (2.4 km) southeast of the village at what is now Beaconsfield Farm.

[5] In 1049–1052 the abbey leased Great Tew: Leofstan, abbot, and St Albans Abbey, to Tova, widow of Wihtric, in return for 3 marks of gold and an annual render of honey; lease, for her lifetime and that of her son, Godwine, of land at Cyrictiwa, with reversion to St Albans.

Sir Lawrence Tanfield, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, bought Great Tew estate in 1611 from Edward Rainsford.

After Tanfield died in 1626, followed by his wife Elizabeth in 1629, Great Tew passed to his young grandson Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland.

[5] In the 1630s Lucius gathered together a Great Tew circle of writers and scholars, who included Abraham Cowley, Ben Jonson and Edmund Waller.

[9] During the English Civil War the young Viscount fought on the Royalist side and was killed in 1643 at the First Battle of Newbury.

[5]Viscount Cary lived in a large manor house that seems to have been built in or before the early 17th century and extended in the latter part.

In 1780 and 1793 Great Tew estate was bought by George Stratton, who had made a fortune in the East India Company.

In 1808 George Frederick Stratton engaged the Scots botanist and garden designer John Loudon, who laid out north and south drives in Great Tew Park and planted ornamental trees in and around the village, which still enhance its appearance.

[5] In 2014, the house seemed unoccupied and clad in scaffolding and plastic sheeting, as a restoration project for the owners, the Johnston family,[13] who reopened the local ironstone quarry in 2000.

[14] Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall acquired the manor in 2020; the building was "in a derelict condition" but the couple planned a restoration to include a domed roof.

[17] The chancel has a monument to Mary Anne Boulton, which includes a reclining female figure sculpted in white marble by Francis Chantrey in 1834.

[23] Traces of its mill ponds, buildings and two water wheels were still visible in the early 1980s,[23] and a small wood there is still called Pool Spinney.

[24] The stream at Tracey Farm was dammed in a mill pond, and both the leat feeding the water wheel and the tail race downstream of it were in brick-lined tunnels, the latter 20 feet (6 m) below ground.

After M. E. Boulton's death in 1914 Great Tew estate was held in public trusteeship for nearly 50 years, during which time many of its historic cottages and houses were unoccupied and allowed to become derelict.

[26] However, a decade later many cottages were continuing to decay and Jennifer Sherwood and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner condemned this as "one of the most depressing sights in the whole county.

"[27] In 1978 another authority described Major Robb's treatment of Great Tew as a "notorious example" that "demonstrated that a single-minded or neglectful owner can still cause both the community and the village fabric to die.

In 1985 Major Robb died, leaving Great Tew estate to the Johnston family, who have worked on restoration.

[31] In the 17th century, Lettice Cary, wife of the 2nd Viscount Falkland, cared for the poor and sick of Great Tew and founded a village school.