BISHOP'S SUTTON HUNDRED 



BuRKfc. Or a cross 

 gules 'with a lion sable in 

 the first and fourth quar- 

 ters. 



formerly M.P. for Christchurch, who only occasionally 

 visited it, and bequeathed it on his death to the earl 

 of Malmesbury. The latter in 1 809 sold Woodcote 

 to a speculator called Lipscombe, who, while Mr. 

 Greenwood of Brookwood was deliberating on the 

 purchase, bought the place and felled the timber. 

 Mr. Greenwood, however, repented of his mistake, and 

 eventually bought the manor without the timber at 

 the price he had demurred to give for the estate. 

 Woodcote remained in the Greenwood family until 

 29 September, 1900, when Mr. Ulick Burke, the 

 present lord of the manor, purchased it. 71 



Woodcote House is a good example of a country 

 house of the late sixteenth or 

 early seventeenth century, to 

 which time the oldest parts of it 

 seem to belong. It is built of 

 red brick of two stories with an 

 attic, with four gables on its 

 principal front, which faces the 

 west, and two at the north end. 

 All the windows were originally 

 mullioned, but except in the 

 gables the mullions have given 

 place to sashes ; those which 

 remain are of brick, plastered, 

 and the windows have lead 



latticed lights. The house formerly had wings run- 

 ning westward at the north and south, and inclosing 

 a forecourt with a wall and gateway on the west ; but 

 nothing of this remains. The main entrance is by a 

 porch on the west front, and the arrangement of the 

 house is simple, there being four rooms on each floor 

 in a line from north to south, opening into each other, 

 the staircase being on the north-east. There are fine 

 wooden chimney-pieces in three of the first-floor rooms 

 and in the north room on the ground floor, the latter 

 probably of somewhat later date than the others, which 

 appear to be original. That in the second room from 

 the north on the first floor has been freed from the 

 paint which unfortunately covers the rest, and shows 

 the remains of decoration in black and gold. In this 

 room also is some tapestry, and some of the original 

 panelling exists. On the ground floor, the south room, 

 and that next to it, to which the porch opens, are 

 fitted with good early eighteenth-century panelling. 

 The staircase has solid turned balusters, and the door- 

 ways opening on to it have 

 moulded oak frames with nail- 

 studded doors hung by wrought- 

 iron strap hinges. At the stair- 

 head in the attics is a screen 

 formed of two ranges of balusters 

 like those of the staircase, and 

 within it a room known as the 

 ' priest's chamber,' from which 

 a smaller room opens. Two of 

 the rain-water heads on the 

 west front are dated, one being 

 of 1630, when Anthony and 

 Mary Bruning were living at 

 Woodcote, and the other of 

 1677, when it had passed to 

 the Venables family. 



At the present time the house 

 contains a number of fine paint- 



i 1 Information given by Mr. Ulick 

 Burke. 



BRAMDEAN 



ings and drawings, including many from the hand 

 of its occupant, Sir Francis Seymour Haden. 



At the back of the house is a charming walled garden, 

 with picturesque red brick stables to the south, and at 

 the south-east of the main block is the old brew-house, 

 now used as a workroom. 



The church of S3". SIMON 4ND ST. JUDE, 

 BRAMDEAN, has a chancel 16 ft. 6 in. 

 CHURCH by 1 3 ft. 6 in., nave 36 ft. 8 in. by 

 1 6 ft. 8 in., with north porch, south ves- 

 try, and large south transept, and a wooden bell-turret 

 over the west end of the nave. The oldest details are 

 the north doorway of the nave and the chancel arch, 

 which date from circa 1 1 70, and if the walls of the 

 nave are older than this there is nothing to show it, 

 all the masonry being covered with plaster inside 

 and out. 



The chancel has undergone a good deal of restora- 

 tion, and of the south wall of the nave only the west 

 end is old, the rest having been destroyed by the 

 addition of a large modern south transept 1 6 ft. 9 in. 

 wide with a vestry to the east of it. An old drawing of 

 the south side of the church, hanging in the vestry, 

 shows in the south wall of the nave two curious 

 windows, each of two round-headed lights, and a 

 square-headed low-set window near the east end of 

 the wall. The traces of one of these double windows 

 may still be seen in the outer face of the wall just 

 west of the transept, set rather high in the wall after 

 the fashion of early windows, but there is nothing 

 to fix their date, whether early or comparatively 

 modern. The church is roofed with red tiles, and 

 the west bell-turret is boarded and finished with 

 a short octagonal shingled spire. The chancel was 

 repaired and reroofed in 1863, and has a modern 

 east window of three lancets under an inclosing 

 arch. In both north and south walls are two plain 

 and short lancet windows with modern rear arches, 

 the external masonry being too much covered with 

 plaster to show its character, but the windows are 

 probably contemporary with the walls in which they 

 are set and may belong to the end of the twelfth 

 century. 



The chancel arch is pointed, of two orders, with 

 the springing line considerably below the level of the 

 capitals and a small chamfer on the angles. The 

 capitals have plain scrolled leafwork, and there are 



WOODCOTE HOUSE, BRAMDEAN. 



49 



