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Caversham Court alias 'The Old Rectory' was the second great house of the parish, after Caversham Park. It stood on the site of the old Chapel of Our Lady of Caversham, an important pilgrimage centre in Medieval times for the worship of the Virgin Mary. Originally a Tudor house built after the Dissolution of the Monasteries around two courtyards, its beautiful timber-framing led to its nickname of the Striped House. It had a 1638 staircase, with bullet holes from a Civil War attack, and an elaborate decorated plaster ceiling. Both survived an almost total rebuilding programme by Pugin, in 1840, under the patronage of the great brewing Simonds family. Pugin gave the house a castellated facade with fretwork balustrading and a 'Norman' porch surmounted by the figure of Cardinal Wolsey. But it did not last another hundred years and was demolished in 1933. The area is now a public park.