Brook Hall

Coordinates: 51°16′48″N 2°12′56″W / 51.2801°N 2.2156°W

Mediaeval wing of Brook Hall, looking north-westwards, in July 2011

Brook Hall is the remains of a medieval English country house at Heywood, near Westbury, in the southern county of Wiltshire. The house was the seat of the first 1st Baron Willoghby de Broke, who took his title from the small settlement now known as Brook. What remains of it is a Grade I listed building.[1]

History

Brook Hall viewed from S-W, July 2011. The western gable-end of the mediaeval wing, shored-up with scaffolding, is visible in centre

What stands today is the remaining wing of the large manor house known as Brook Hall, one of the Grade I listed buildings in Wiltshire. The manor was held in the 14th century by the Pavely family, passing by marriage to the Cheyne family and then to Sir John Willoughby, whose son Sir Robert Willoughby (died 1502) was created the first Baron Willoughby de Broke, which title was taken from this manor.[2] While the title survives today, the family's connection with Brook faded away in the 17th century, after which Brook Hall went into a long decline and for most of its subsequent history was a tenant farm.[3]

Description

Michael Ford says of Brook Hall:

The hall is situated at the end of a minor road which goes right up to the buildings, through a shallow ford. The building range in front of the 17c farmhouse is an early 16c lodging, ‘Brook Hall’, of two storeys and built of stone. It was used to accommodate guests and retainers and had stabling below with chambers above. This is Wiltshire’s best example of a medieval lodging. It will hopefully be repaired and preserved in the near future now that the Wiltshire Historic Buildings Trust has taken over its management. They are looking for a partner to purchase the building, after completion of the work, for one of a variety of possible uses.[4]

The poet Edward Thomas in his book In Pursuit of Spring,[5] says this of Brook Hall (which he calls Brook House):

.... I reached the flat, rushy, and willowy green valley of the Biss. The road forded the brook and brought me up into the sloping courtyard of Brook House Farm. On the right was a high wall and a pile of rough cordwood against it; on the left a buttressed, ecclesiastical-looking building with tiers of windows and three doorways, some four or five centuries old; and before me, at the top of the yard, between the upper end of the high wall and the ecclesiastical-looking building, was the back of the farm-house, its brass pans gleaming. This is the remnant of Brook House. What is now a cowshed below, a cheese room above, has been the chapel of Brook House, formerly the seat of Paveleys, Joneses, and Cheneys. The brook below was once called Baron's brook on account of the barony conferred on the owner: the family of Willoughby de Broke are said to have taken their name from it. The cows made an excellent congregation, free from all the disadvantages of believing or wanting to believe in the immortality of the soul, in the lower half of the old chapel; the upper floor and its shelves of Cheddar cheeses of all sizes could not offend the most jealous deity or his most jealous worshippers. The high, intricate rafter-work of the tiled roof was open, and the timber, as pale as if newly scrubbed, was free from cobwebs — in fact, chestnut wood is said to forbid cobwebs. Against the wall leaned long boards bearing the round stains of bygone cheeses. Every one who could write had carved his name on the stone. Instead of windows there were three doors in the side away from the quadrangle, as if at one time they had been entered either from a contiguous building or by a staircase from beneath. Evidently both the upper and the lower chambers were formerly subdivided into cells of some kind.
The farm-house is presumably the remnant of the old manor house, cool and still, looking out away from the quadrangle over a garden containing a broad, rough-hewn stone disinterred hereby, and a green field corrugated in parallelograms betokening old walls or an encampment. The field next to this is spoken of as a churchyard, but there seems to be no record of skeletons found there. Half a mile off in different directions are Cutteridge, Hawkeridge, and Storridge, but nothing nearer in that narrow, gentle valley. . . .

Notes and references

  1. ↑ Historic England. "Early Wing at Brook Hall (1285019)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
  2. ↑ W. H. Hamilton Rogers, The Strife of the Roses & Days of the Tudors in the West (Exeter: 1890), pp. 1-10
  3. ↑ Man behind throne born at Brook Hall dated October 2004 at gazetteandherald.co.uk, accessed 25 July 2014
  4. ↑ Michael Ford, Other Interesting Medieval Houses and Buildings in Wiltshire at britannia.com (Britannia: Historic Wiltshire), accessed 27 May 2012
  5. ↑ Edward Thomas, In Pursuit of Spring, Thomas Nelson and Son, April 1914, page 206