Broome Hall | |
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Etymology | Broom is a generic and specific English term for the genisteae genus of plants and certain species; from this the tool is derived. |
General information | |
Status | Converted to flats |
Type | Country house and estate |
Classification | Grade II listed |
Location | Near Coldharbour, Surrey, England |
Coordinates | 51°10′14″N0°21′21″W / 51.1705°N 0.3557°W Coordinates: 51°10′14″N0°21′21″W / 51.1705°N 0.3557°W |
Completed | c. 1830 |
Owner | Andrew Spottiswoode MP Frederick Pennington MP Oliver Reed, actor |
Broome Hall is a Grade II-listed country house with grounds including cottages and outhouses on the wooded, upper southern slopes of the Greensand Ridge near Coldharbour in Surrey, England.
It was built around 1830 for the politician and printer Andrew Spottiswoode, and had a succession of similarly wealthy family owners before the main house was converted into eleven flats, each separately owned, in the late 20th century. It was owned, for a number of years in the 1970s, by actor Oliver Reed.
Broom(e) refers to the genus (and specifically several species) of often flowering plants genisteae (along with gorse, lupins and laburnum). Along with evergreens, broom dominates the sandy soil in the region.
The house was built about 1830 for the printer-politician and investor Andrew Spottiswoode, and extended in the late 19th century for Sir Alexander Brown, 1st Baronet. [2] It was also home from 1865 to the international merchant-politician Frederick Pennington (died 1914) and his suffragette wife, Margaret. [3] [4]
In the Second World War, it served as headquarters of Canadian forces in Britain. Its gravel drive was reinforced with concrete to withstand the weight of tanks. [5]
In 1954, the White Fathers, Christian missionaries in Africa and an order of monks, bought the property and used it as their British novitiate, for training new monks. [5]
The actor Oliver Reed bought the 56-bedroom property in 1971 [6] [7] [8] and became the "Master of Broome Hall" for eight years. [9] [5] Reed only bought the house because he was looking for a field for a horse he had bought from Johnny Kidd, the father of future supermodel Jodie Kidd, who ran a stud farm in Ewhurst. [6] He then spent a fortune renovating it. [9] The naked wrestling scene with Reed and Alan Bates in Ken Russell's 1969 film Women in Love is said to have been filmed there. [5] Reed was banned from his local pub there for descending a chimney naked and shouting out: "Ho! Ho! Ho! I'm Santa Claus." [5] According to legend, Reed buried the jewellery collection of a former girlfriend in the grounds where it still lies. [5]
The house was then bought by a property developer who converted it into flats. [5] It was assessed and recognised as a Grade II-listed building in 1987. [2]
Dorking is a market town in Surrey in South East England, about 34 km (21 mi) south of London. It is in Mole Valley District and the council headquarters are to the east of the centre. The High Street runs roughly east–west, parallel to the Pipp Brook and along the northern face of an outcrop of Lower Greensand. The town is surrounded on three sides by the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is close to Box Hill and Leith Hill.
Leatherhead is a town in the Mole Valley District of Surrey, England, about 17 mi (27 km) south of Central London. The settlement grew up beside a ford on the River Mole, from which its name is thought to derive. During the late Anglo-Saxon period, Leatherhead was a royal vill and is first mentioned in the will of Alfred the Great in 880 AD. The first bridge across the Mole may have been constructed in around 1200 and this may have coincided with the expansion of the town and the enlargement of the parish church.
Westcott is a semi-rural English village and former civil parish 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of the centre of Dorking on the A25 between the North Downs and Greensand Ridge, making it one of the 'Vale of Holmesdale' villages and is in Surrey in the direction of Guildford. It is served by a local bus service and is 1 mile (1.6 km) from Dorking West railway station on the North Downs Line.
Abinger is a large, well-wooded and mostly rural civil parish that lies between the settlements of Dorking, Shere and Ewhurst in the district of Mole Valley, Surrey, England.
Betchworth is a village and civil parish in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England. The village centre is on the north bank of the River Mole and south of the A25 road, almost 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Dorking and 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Reigate. London is 19.5 miles (31.4 km) north of the village.
Headley is a village and civil parish in the North Downs in Surrey, England. The nearest settlements are, to the west, Mickleham and Leatherhead; to the north, Ashtead and Langley Vale; to the east, Walton-on-the-Hill; and to the south, Box Hill. It is just outside the M25 motorway encircling London.
Cherkley Court, at the extreme southeast of Leatherhead, Surrey, in England, is a late Victorian neo-classical mansion and estate of 370 acres (1.5 km2), once the home of Canadian-born press baron Lord Beaverbrook. The main house is listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for England.
Capel is a village and civil parish in southern Surrey, England. It is equidistant between Dorking and Horsham – about 5 miles (8.0 km) away. Around Capel, to the west, skirts the A24 road. Capel is approximately 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north of the West Sussex border, 26 miles (42 km) south of London and 12 miles (19 km) southeast of Guildford and is in the Mole Valley district. The village is in the north of a landscape called the Weald, meaning forest, which forms a significant minority of the land today, particularly towards the Greensand Ridge.
Betchworth Castle is a mostly crumbled ruin of a fortified medieval stone house with some tall, two-storey corners strengthened in the 18th century, in the north of the semi-rural parish of Brockham. It is built on a sandstone spur overlooking the western bank of the River Mole in Surrey in England.
Norbury Park is a swathe of mixed wooded and agricultural land associated with its Georgian manor house near Leatherhead and Dorking, Surrey, which appears in the Domesday Book of 1086. It occupies mostly prominent land reaching into a bend in the Mole in the parish of Mickleham.
West Surrey was a parliamentary constituency in the county of Surrey, which returned two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the bloc vote system.
Gatton Park is a country estate set in parkland landscaped by Capability Brown at Gatton, near Reigate in Surrey, England.
Milton Court, at the far west of the town of Dorking, is a 17th-century country house in Surrey. The court was expanded and substantially rebuilt by the Victorian architect William Burges and is a Grade II* listed building including the attached forecourt walls, balustrading, terrace, piers, urns and stone-carved ball finial.
Edward Lapidge (1779–1860) was an English architect, who held the post of county surveyor of Surrey and designed Kingston Bridge.
Wotton House is a hotel, wedding venue, conference centre and former country house in Wotton near Dorking, Surrey, England. Originally the centre of the Wotton Estate and the seat of the Evelyn family, it was the birthplace in 1620 of diarist and landscape gardener John Evelyn, who built the first Italian garden in England there.
Spring Park is a small area in London, England. It is within the London Borough of Bromley and the London Borough of Croydon, straddling the traditional Kent-Surrey border along The Beck. Spring Park is located north of Addington, west of West Wickham and south of Monks Orchard and Shirley.
Denbies is a large estate to the northwest of Dorking in Surrey, England. A farmhouse and surrounding land originally owned by John Denby was purchased in 1734 by Jonathan Tyers, the proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens in London, and converted into a weekend retreat. The house he built appears to have been of little architectural significance, but the Gothic garden he developed in the grounds on the theme of death achieved some notoriety, despite being short-lived. The estate was bought by Lord King of Ockham following Tyers's death in 1767, and the macabre artefacts he had installed, including two stone coffins topped by human skulls, were removed.
Godalming Friends Meeting House is a Friends meeting house in the ancient town of Godalming in the English county of Surrey. One of many Nonconformist places of worship in the town, it dates from 1748 but houses a congregation whose roots go back nearly a century earlier. Decline set in during the 19th century and the meeting house passed out of Quaker use for nearly 60 years, but in 1926 the cause was reactivated and since then an unbroken history of Quaker worship has been maintained. Many improvements were carried out in the 20th century to the simple brick-built meeting house, which is Grade II-listed in view of its architectural and historical importance.
Andrew Spottiswoode was a Scottish printer, publisher and politician, MP for Saltash from 1826 to 1830, and Colchester from 1830 to 1831.
Media related to Broome Hall at Wikimedia Commons