Broome Hall


Broome Hall is a grade II-listed country house with grounds including cottages and outhouses on the wooded, upper southern slopes of the Greensand Ridge near Coldharbour in Surrey, England.
It was built around 1830 for the politician and printer Andrew Spottiswoode, and had a succession of similarly wealthy family owners before the main house was converted into eleven flats, each separately owned, in the late 20th century. Broom refers to the genus of often flowering plants which, with evergreens, dominate the sandy soil.

19th century

The house was built about 1830 for the printer-politician and investor Andrew Spottiswoode, and extended in the late 19th century for Sir Alexander Brown, 1st Baronet. It was also home from 1865 to the international merchant-politician Frederick Pennington and his suffragette wife Margaret.

20th century

In the Second World War, it served as headquarters of Canadian forces.
In 1954, the White Fathers, Christian missionaries in Africa and an order of monks, bought the property and used it as their British novitiate, for training new monks.
The actor Oliver Reed bought it from the monks, and lived there in the late 1960s until the 1980s. According to Reed's biographer Robert Sellers, Reed only bought the house because he wanted a field to keep his horse in, but then spent a fortune renovating it. The naked wrestling scene with Reed and Alan Bates in Ken Russell's 1969 film Women in Love is said to have been filmed there. Reed was banned from his local pub there for descending a chimney naked and shouting out: "Ho! Ho! Ho! I'm Santa Claus." According to legend, Reed buried the jewellery collection of a former girlfriend in the grounds where it still lies.
The house was then bought by a property developer who converted it into flats. It was assessed and recognised as a listed building in 1987.