Colonel Brassey (Thomas Brassey’s son) inherited the estate and lived there on his own until his death towards the end of the 70s. The
estate was then broken up and sold off in lots and sadly, our cut
through was cut off. Many wealthy and not so wealthy people have
bought/sold/built on the estate since then. The one famous person
there currently and the owner of what was the stables is the bass
player from Coldplay (but I didn’t tell you that!) The stables are
also famous for an incident involving Ian Flemming’s nephew, but
again, I wouldn’t want to give details here!
The reason for our visit was because the last time I mentioned
Copse Hill in my blog I was contacted by a lady who in researching
her family tree, found that her great aunt was in service there at
the beginning of the century and she had asked me to take some photos (any excuse?). The present owners are a ‘jolly’ couple (92 and 86) and because they have met my parents before, gave us a warm welcome.
The wife showed us a book she has of Lutyen's architecture with a
photograph of the hall which he designed. It has been slightly
modified now, if only through incorporating a Stanner stair lift, but
it is essentially the same.
If the weather was dull on that day, the building certainly wasn’t
and Colin the gardener added some sunshine with his many anecdotes of local ‘goings on’…
No comments:
Post a Comment