Friar Park, Gothic Revival country house in Henley-on-Thames, England

Friar Park is a Gothic Revival country house on an east-facing hillside with formal terraces and sprawling garden grounds. The two-story residence shows a square tower rising above the rooflines, offering open views over the surrounding meadows.

Friar Park was built for the lawyer Sir Frank Crisp, who owned the estate from 1889 until his death in 1919; construction began in 1889 and was completed in 1895. After Crisp, the property passed at auction to Sir Percival David, and the estate was later given to nuns of the Salesians of Don Bosco, who ran the Sacred Heart School in Henley. By the late 1960s it was in disrepair; George Harrison bought it in January 1970.

The estate's name and its "Two Holy Friars" plaque, a friar holding a frying pan pierced with holes, come from Sir Frank Crisp's humour rather than a religious community. George Harrison's 1970 song "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)" was inspired by the house's builder, and later lyrics quote carvings he found on the property.

The gateway in the photograph, with red-brick and white-stone piers and black iron gates, carries a small sign reading "Friar Park". The estate is a private residence and does not open regularly to the public, so the grounds and house are seen only from outside the gates.

The estate hosts an artificial rock garden laid out with more than 20,000 tons of rock and displaying thousands of alpine plants. This feature forms one of the largest of its kind in the country and shapes wide sections of the garden landscape.