Monkey Business

With 800 years of history and brimming with English decadence, YTL Hotel’s Monkey Island Estate in the quaint countryside of Bray, is a hidden gem that’s waiting to be discovered.

- Amy Yasmine

Imagine frolicking through a vast seven-acre lawn, where wild flowers bloom in summer’s glorious sunlight, and the view of countryside canals set against an 18th-century estate. With Dario Marianelli’s arrangements playing on my Apple EarPods, it feels as if I’ve just stepped onto the set of Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride and Prejudice remake, where romance and regality encapsulate the glorious past of Victorian times. And yet, today in the quaint English countryside of Bray, the historic Monkey Island Estate has captured a moment suspended in time, all within a secluded island surrounded by lush greenery and calm waters.

Nevertheless, the Estate’s quirky moniker has raised many a curious eyebrow. How did a slice of the rural home county receive such a peculiar name? Perhaps the answer is found at the end of the 12th-century, where a small band of monks attached to Merton Priory settled at Amerden Bank, a moated site near Bray Lock ‘with 92 acres of land and assant with fishing in the Thames’. Christened Monks Eyot (old English for island), the Estate remained God’s land for several hundred years, before finding itself in the hands of the Englefield family in 1606, and later, Charles Spencer, third Duke of Marlborough in 1723.

It was at this time that the island blossomed into an opulent (albeit for angling) respite, with thanks to Palladian architect Robert Morris. This transaction, which spawned into two pieces of Grade I–listed buildings, saw the architect transform two of the Estate’s properties into grand masterpieces; the Fishing Temple with a loggia open to the lawn, and a Fishing Pavilion with timbers cut to resemble stone blocks, providing accommodation and entertaining space for the Duke.