The manor of Mapledurham was bought in 1490 by Richard Blount of Iver however the current house was started by Sir Michael Blount (c1530-1610) and has remained in the Blount-Eyston family to this day.[2][3][4] Building was started around 1585, at the time of the Spanish Armada,[2] in the classic Elizabethan E-shape.[citation needed] It includes a late 18th-century chapel built in the Strawberry HillGothic style for the recusant Roman Catholic owners of the house.
Prior to the Catholic Emancipation, the owners would hide priests in its priest holes, some of which were only discovered in the 21st century, and secretly celebrate Mass with a makeshift altar hidden inside a writing desk.[4] The estate covers much of the village including Mapledurham Watermill and part of the church.
Sight-seeing helicopter flights run from the estate, with up to 70 short flights per day, caused complaints about noise levels, with one local resident describing it in 2013 as like being "in Vietnam during a high intensity attack". A representative of the estate responded by saying that they had taken account of the complaints by reducing the number of helicopter flight days from 20 to 10 per year.[11][12]