Northill Manor before 1731

On 12 and 13 July 1652 Thomas Ellis conveyed the Manor of Northill including the Capital Messuage in Northill to Thomas Bromsall, grandfather of Owen Thomas Bromsall, whose inventory is transcribed below. It was undoubtedly an ancient site and almost certainly moated, as the deeds of 1653 mention one in the vicinity. It is impossible to say if the house was rebuilt by the Bromsalls. The only illustration of the house is a small conventionalised sketch on Thomas Jeffreys's map of Bedfordshire, dated 1765. The picture shows a rectangular house such as could have been built any time from say the 1680s onward.

If the house had been rebuilt the most likely Bromsall to have done it would have been Ralph, who died 1693? After laying out “severall great Sumes of moneys in the repairing and building” of his house at Moggerhanger, he moved to Northill Manor House on the death of his father in 1682. He could well have rebuilt or altered the house in the period 1682-1693.

Owen Thomas Bromsall's death in 1731 led to a Chancery case and the inventory below comes from Chancery records, held at the Public Record Office. An identical copy is kept among the Prerogative Court of Canterbury Archives and originally accompanied his will.

Northill Manor Inventory 1731

The inventory itself does not greatly help us with dating the house. It contains at one and the same time a possible traditional hall and screens passage as well as signs of the formal arrangement of apartments that was such a feature of early eighteenth-century houses. It looks therefore like a sixteenth/seventeenth century house adapted before 1731 to meet the new fashions of the period. The formal end of the house, probably the south, saw a progression from the east facing hall through the drawing room to the best parlour. The servants’ hall was close to the best parlour and probably also had a door through to the main hall, so that orders could be attended to promptly.

This formality is mirrored on the first floor where the main staircase led to a suite of rooms probably above the drawing room and best parlour which included the ante-chamber, dressing room, “Blew Room” and “Blew Chamber Closet”.