Buyers are being offered the rare chance to return one of England’s great stately homes back into a single dwelling.
Bramshill, a former police training college near Hook, was bought by heritage developer City & Country for £20m in 2014, in a deal described at the time as an “excellent outcome”. Owned by the Home Office since 1953, the landmark site offered a mighty 357,804 square feet of internal space set in 262 acres of grounds.
Now sub-divided, the estate’s Grade I listed Jacobean centrepiece has been listed as a standalone proposition, on a POA basis, with Knight Frank, which brokered the original deal to C&C, tasked with finding another buyer.
Planning consent is pending to create a 43,000 square foot private mansion along with a former coach house (1,851 square feet) and assembly dining hall (18,974 square feet), surrounded by 92 acres of land including formal gardens and a park grazed by a resident herd of fallow deer.
Dating back to the Domesday Book, the estate was originally the seat of “Bromeslle” held by Hugh De Port, and the stunning pile was built in 1605-1612 for Edward, Lord Zouche of Harringworth, to demonstrate his power and riches to James I, who visited in 1620. It passed between various noblemen until 1699, when the Cope family bought it and lived there continuously for 236 years, during which time they added to and remodelled the house and grounds. Bramshill was used as a maternity home in the Second World War, and afterwards as a shelter for the exiled King of Romania. It was turned into the headquarters of the then Police Training College in 1960, with a raft of additions over the following five decades creating a grand total of 329 study bedrooms and further ancillary accommodation.
According to the particulars, the proposed plans will “sensitively transform this spectacular property to create a wonderful home for modern living; including numerous dramatic rooms for entertaining on a grand scale together with a cinema, gym and wine cellar”. Followed through, this could well become one of the country’s greatest mansions once more…
Emma Cleugh, Head of Institutional Consultancy at Knight Frank: “Bramshill is an extraordinarily special place – its setting, heritage and scale combine to create the most wonderful opportunity to the market. With such a rare offering we are expecting strong levels of interest.”
Full details here
