Bramshill House

Bramshill House is at the approximate centre of a triangle formed by Reading, Basingstoke and Farnborough, about by road southwest of central London. ==History==

Original house The 1086 Domesday Book lists one of the two manors of Bromeselle (the Anglo-Norman spelling of Bromshyll) as held by Hugh de Port. In the early 14th century, Sir John Foxley ( – c. 1325), Baron of the Exchequer, built and endowed a chapel in the village of Bramshill. His first wife, Constance de Bramshill, may have been the heiress of the Bramshill family. Their son, Thomas Foxley (c. 1305–1360), became MP for Berkshire in 1325, and was appointed constable of Windsor Castle in 1328, soon after the accession of the 14-year-old Edward III. Based on the similarity of the surviving vaults under Bramshill House and those under what became the servants' hall and steward's room at Windsor Castle, it may have been a copy of William of Wykeham's work there. The cricket ground at the house first played host to a first-class match in 1823 when an early Hampshire team played an England XI. Hampshire won by five wickets. Two further first-class matches were played there in 1825, when Hampshire drew against Godalming and defeated Sussex. A final first-class match was held there in 1826 when a combined Hampshire and Surrey team played and lost to Sussex. Modern times In 1935, the house was purchased from the Cope family by Ronald Nall-Cain, 2nd Baron Brocket, the house's last private owner. It was used by the Red Cross as a maternity home during the Second World War, after which it became the home of the exiled King Michael and Queen Anne of Romania for several years. and was acquired by the British government the following year as a dedicated site for police training. It became the location of the National Police College in 1960. From 2005, two buildings on the site housed the European Police College (CEPOL) until this was moved to Budapest in 2014. By the late 1980s the estate had become expensive to maintain, and according to John Wheeler, Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, by 1989 it was "in a poor state of repair". In July 2013 the Home Office placed the house and estate on the market for £25 million. It was sold to the heritage property developers City & Country in August 2014. In 2018, the house, with a reduced estate of about 90 acres, was put back on the market with a guide price of £10 million. ==Architecture==

Exterior The 15-bedroom Bramshill House is one of the largest and most important Jacobean mansions in England, described as one of the "glories of English architecture" by the historians Anthony Blunt and James Lees-Milne. The architecture of the three-storey building was inspired by the Italian Renaissance, and was executed mainly by German builders. It is approximately in length. The design is traditionally attributed to the architect John Thorpe, although no records remain to confirm the attribution. Surviving records do show that the stone mason Richard Goodridge was working at Bramshill in 1617 and again in 1621 and the authors of the revised Hampshire volume of Pevsner's Buildings of England suggest him as a possible alternative designer. The building stands on the edge of a plateau, overlooking the park to the south. The plan of the house is unusual, partly because of its incorporation of the earlier building; it extends at right angles to the primary (southern) façade. The elevations are symmetrical, facing outwards, but the interior court is narrow, and projecting wings lie at either end of the eastern and western sides. Bramshill House is three storeys high on the southern main entrance side and two storeys high to the north and east. There are three vaulted cellars to the west. The outer two of the inner sections feature eight angular windows, aligned in rows of four on the first two floors and then a row of four windows on the top floor. The inner two sections have the same layout on the first and top floors with eight windows aligned in rows of four on the first floor and four windows on the top floor, but the ground floor features two arches, which form part of the central loggia. Carved in the wall at the side is a frieze consisting of four squares, each depicting an animal: a lion, an elephant, a wild boar and a camel. The west façade dates to the 18th century and is the only one with multiple gables; the windows on the ground floor are sashed. Beyond the staircase are the state rooms and what was known as the "Wrought Room". The room has an ornamental ceiling with a Renaissance chimneypiece. Two of the bedrooms, the two "White Rooms", were originally connected to what was called the Flower-de-luce Room, but the doors have been boarded up. The Long Gallery fills the first floor of the northern range: long and with a richly decorated stucco ceiling and a complex wooden chimneypiece, it formerly contained a "very curious collection of portraits of distinguished characters". Also on the first floor is the "Chapel Drawing Room" in the south wing, connected to the Drawing Room. The Copes created this room by reducing the size of the original chapel, which is entered through it. The current chapel has an altar reredos with paintings of the Virgin Mary, St. Stephen, St. Mary Magdalene and St. John the Evangelist, by Alexander Rowan and dated by Pevsner to about 1840. The tapestry in the chapel room is older than the house, and was assessed by an expert as dating to 1450 or earlier; in the early 19th century it had hung in the Red Drawing Room. When the chapel ceiling was restored by Sir William Cope, it was discovered that one section of the plaster work had previously been replaced with carved wood. The large window in the south wall of the courtyard was presumably moved from the original chapel. ==Grounds and garden==

The house is set in of grounds, which include an lake north of the house. The grounds form part of a Registered Historic Park that received a Grade II* listing in 1984; this was subsequently upgraded to Grade I in September 2017. Under this designation are the of early 17th-century formal gardens near the house, the wider medieval park, landscaped from the 17th to the 20th century, with of woodland and buildings including an icehouse and a folly known as Conduit House. Bramshill Park was conceived as a "hunting box" for Henry Frederick and became a popular estate for hunting. On 24 July 1621, while hunting in the park, George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, accidentally shot and killed one of the gamekeepers with his crossbow. An inquiry cleared him of murder. Another notable clergyman/hunter who frequented Bramshill was Charles Kingsley, rector of Eversley, who hunted fox and deer and collected butterflies there and frequently took his family and friends. Kingsley was reportedly especially enamoured of the fir trees, which he considered "a source of constant delight", fondly naming them "James the First's gnarled giants". In the 19th century, Sir John Cope, a friend of Kingsley's, was known as a supporter of the fox hunt and especially as a breeder of fox hounds. The opening of the season at Bramshill in the late 1840s was noted in the British hunting press. The main avenue approaches from the southwest, through an arched gateway formed by two Grade II listed early 19th-century lodges, before crossing the Broad Water formed by the River Hart by a Grade I listed early 19th-century bridge with two arches. There are separate listings for other structures near the house, including the Grade I listed early 17th-century triple-arched gateway on the route to Reading to the northeast of the house, Grade I listed early 17th-century boundary walls and turrets to the south and west, Grade II listed boundary walls and gate-piers to the west, including the kitchen garden, Grade I listed garden walls and gateways to the north and east, and the Grade II listed late 18th-century stable block to the north. ==Legends==

Bramshill has been cited as one of the most haunted houses in England. According to one UK police officer who worked at the college, 14 ghosts have purportedly been identified, although another officer at the college did not take these suggestions seriously. The Green Man, dressed as his name suggests, reportedly manifests near the lake, as does the ghost supposed to be that of a gardener who drowned there. The Grey Lady allegedly haunts the terrace, the library, and the chapel. Legg suggests that she has a young and beautiful appearance, with a sad, tear-stained face and golden hair, and smelling of the lilies of the valley; Lal argues that she has reddish-brown hair and wears a grey, sleeveless robe. The Grey Lady's husband has been reported to haunt the stables and the chapel drawing room. The ghost of a young child allegedly haunts the library and the Fleur de Lys room; the child has supposedly been heard crying, and attempts to hold visitors' hands. Folklore holds that the Grey Lady was the child's mother. A lady dressed in the style of Queen Anne, and a knight in armour, are reported to have been seen in the chapel drawing room. The chapel itself is purportedly frequented by the ghost of a lady in 17th-century dress, and by that of a nun. A young man dressed in 1920s tennis garb, reputed to be a Cope family member who fell from a train, has supposedly been seen in the reception area of the house. A small boy documented to haunt the terrace is said to have fallen from the roof sometime in the 18th century. In addition, Bramshill House was cited by the historian William Page as a possible location for the Legend of the Mistletoe Bough, a ghost story associated with several English country mansions. This legend tells of a bride who supposedly hid in a wooden chest during a game of hide and seek on her wedding night. In the case of Bramshill House, the story has it that this happened at Christmas time, and that the bride's skeleton was found in the chest fifty years later still wearing her wedding dress and with a sprig of mistletoe in her hand; the chest is on display in the entrance hall. The woman is sometimes identified as John Cope's daughter Anne, who married Hugh Bethell of Yorkshire. An alternative claim is that she was Genevre Orsini, who was married in 1727, and that her ghost came to Bramshill from Italy together with the chest. In his monograph on the house, the Victorian writer Sir William Cope preferred this theory and added that the chest on display was not the original, which had been proved large enough by "a woman of comely proportions" who had tested it by lying down in it, but which had been taken away by Sir Denzil Cope's widow in 1812. The ghost of the bride is referred to as the White Lady, and she is said by Legg to haunt the Fleur de Lys room. According to Legg, Michael I of Romania asked to be moved to another room during a stay there, in order to not be disturbed by the young woman in white who passed through his bedroom every night. An old man with a grey beard, thought by Legg to be the father or husband of the White Lady, is reported to stare through windows and at the Mistletoe Chest. ==References==