THERE has been a house at Great Burgh in Surrey since before the Domesday book. Over the next nine centuries it changed families and styles but remained one of the most prominent homes in the county.

On the surface today’s Great Burgh House looks like a typical stately pile. It was built in 1912 as a wedding present for the heir to the Colman’s mustard fortune.

It fell into corporate hands not long after and brewers and chemists have since had their run of the place.

Today, the traditional façade hides a new form of alchemy. A high-tech world where traders glued to phones and flickering screens make millions under the eye of one of America’s richest men.

Welcome to the world of one of global finance’s most successful hedge funds: Tudor Investments. Founded by Paul Tudor Jones II, the fund was one of the biggest winners in the Black Monday market crash of 1987. Now, with some $19 billion (£9.5 billion) under management, it is trying to repeat that success.

The world’s markets are in turmoil, and that’s exactly how Tudor likes it. The firm has big positions in commodities, where prices have soared, and specialises in “event-driven strategies” — making money out of bad news.

Much of that money is washing through the Grade II-listed mansion on the Epsom Downs. Great Burgh has housed 100-plus traders, researchers and Tudor partners for the past eight years, and throughout that time the secretive hedge fund has kept its opulent abode out of the public eye.

When Tudor bought the mansion in 1998 it was very different from today’s glitzy traders’ paradise. Formerly owned by Beecham Pharmaceuticals, the house and its 25 acres were headquarters to the company’s research base. Local legend has it that Beecham carried out experiments on animals in labs on the grounds.

While all remnants of Great Burgh’s past were purged during the 18-month, multi-million-pound conversion, animals are still very much part of the house’s character. People who have visited speak of walls covered in prints and paintings of lions, eagles and tigers.

“Throughout all of his [Jones's] offices there is lots of wildlife, especially big game and feathers. He loves nature, he’s a fanatic,” said one.

Another source said that the photos and prints were meant to fire up employees. “He thinks of the traders like wild, predatory animals and the market is their jungle, so that’s why you have all these lions and tigers around the place.”

The trader has indulged his passion with more than pictures. One of his big purchases after he started the Tudor fund in the mid-1980s was a hunting retreat overlooking Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.

An expert hunter with a bow and arrow, and particularly adept at tracking American buffalo, Jones owns a 346,000-acre safari park in Zimbabwe and he recently purchased a game lodge in the Serengeti in Tanzania.

Tudor also owns one of the largest private houses in Greenwich, Connecticut, with lots of marble, sweeping views and loads of jungle pictures.

Back in Surrey, the traders work in a modern, glass-fronted extension of the manor house. As they lack the restaurants and other amenities enjoyed by their hedge-fund peers in London’s Mayfair, Jones has tried to bring the West End to them.

Facilities include a pool, tennis courts, a gym and a bar. The house also acts as a corporate hospitality venue with an ornate, oak-panelled dining room that can seat 20, a boardroom, lounge and conference room for entertaining investors and other business partners.

Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Jones got his first run at trading cotton futures in a small office in New Orleans and from there he went to the New York Cotton Exchange.

In 1980, he started Tudor with $21,000 borrowed from friends and family.

An extreme work ethic — he would wake through the night to check the markets in Hong Kong and London — combined with more progressive research methods than his peers — meant Tudor soon grew into a multi-million-dollar fund.

He also became a master of self-publicity, happily lapping up media interest and hobnobbing with socialites such as

Bianca Jagger and Christina Onassis; and he often referred to his good-luck trainers that used to belong to actor Bruce Willis.

His greatest publicity coup came with a one-hour television documentary called Trader that was aired in America in November 1987. A camera followed him for five months while he managed about $250m in assets for 300 clients.

Reviewers described Jones as a young Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas’s notorious character in the film Wall Street. He is shown losing $6m in a day and making almost as much another.

Very few copies still exist, and, according to the film’s director, Jones asked for the documentary to be removed from circulation in the 1990s. His reputation was also tarnished by an $800,000 fine in 1996 for improper short-selling.

His desire for a low profile is evident in the security at Great Burgh. A barrier and signs instruct all visitors to report to the guardhouse. A local cab driver who used to take a trader from Epsom station to the office said: “Every day I had to stop [at the guardhouse], give her name, the reason for being there. They never simply waved us in.”

There is also little understanding in the local area of who or what Tudor is. Physically, its presence is shielded by the huge, glass-fronted headquarters of Toyota UK. The deluxe facilities on site negate the need for traders to mingle with locals in the nearby pubs.

Avoiding the media does not mean Jones has retreated into his $25m pad on the Greenwich waterfront that he shares with his Australian wife and three daughters. Every spring Tudor’s top management and advisers take a skiing trip to Telluride in Colorado or St Moritz, with guests ferried in Jones’s private jet.

He is also a leading light in American political and charity circles. Last May Jones used his home for a fundraiser for US presidential candidate Barack Obama, and he is one of New York’s most prominent philanthropists through his Robin Hood Foundation.

The 53-year-old, however, still spends much of his time trading — 14 hours a day during the week.

Whether he can repeat Tudor’s past performance in this recession is not yet clear. If he does pull it off, one thing is certain, Jones and his traders will not be seen celebrating in Epsom’s Derby Arms.

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