Bulmershe Court

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Bulmershe Court is, today, a campus of the University of Reading, situated in what is now the Reading suburb of Woodley, in the English county of Berkshire. Historically, Bulmershe Court has been the name of a manor and of two quite distinct country houses, one of which still stands but is now known as Bulmershe Manor.

1 History
2 Campus
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

Bulmershe first appears in existing records in the 12th century as a place in the parish of Sonning. The first reference to it as a manor was in 1447 when it was granted to Reading Abbey. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the land was acquired by the poet William Gray. He probably built the first house here, the remains of which may be the basis of the present Bulmershe Manor.

Grey's wife, Agnes, was the widow of Robert Blagrave, a merchant of London and Reading and their son, John was Gray's heir. Through this the Blagrave family came to own Bulmershe Court, although both John Blagrave the mathematician and Daniel Blagrave the regicide resided at the family's other residence, at Southcote House in what is now the Reading suburb of Southcote.

The main branch of the Blagrave family died out in 1789, and the estate was sold to Henry Addington, then Speaker of the British House of Commons. At the same time he purchased the adjoining house of Woodley House, which had been built some seven years earlier.

Addington preferred to live in the more modern house, and in time the name Bulmershe Court transferred over to that building. The earlier Bulmershe Court became known as Old Bulmershe Court. For a time it fell into disrepair, but was restored in the 1920s and renamed Bulmershe Manor. Bulmershe Manor is a Grade II* listed building.

The newer Bulmersh Court was used by the War Office during World War II, but was pulled down in 1962 to make way for a new teacher training college called Bulmershe College. Bulmershe College merged with the University of Reading in 1982, and the site is now the Bulmershe Court Campus of that university.

[edit] Campus

The Bulmershe Court Campus is home to the University's Institute of Education and the School of Health and Social Care. The student accommodation of Bulmershe Hall is also located on the campus.