page_title: Bromyard
section_title: Norton
hierarchical_section_title: Bromyard / Architecture / Norton
caption_attribution_description: English: Feeling lucky? This cow was guarding the bridlepath to Buckenhill Manor, visible in the distance. I stayed my side of the intervening fence!
context_page_description: Bromyard is a market town in the Bromyard and Winslow civil parish of the county of Herefordshire, England. It is situated in the valley of the River Frome. The 2011 census gives a population of approximately 4,500. It lies near to the county border with Worcestershire on the A44 between Leominster and Worcester. Bromyard has a number of traditional half-timbered buildings, including some of the pubs, and the parish church dates back to Norman times. For centuries there was a thriving livestock market. The town is twinned with Athis-de-l'Orne, Normandy.
context_section_description: The medieval Manor of Norton in the Broxash Hundred, today in the adjacent parish of Norton at the north-east, was constrained by extensive parkland and hunting-grounds amounting a total of 3,183 acres.
  Peter de Newebond took occupation of Newbarns in about 1285 on half virgate of land at the same time that the Welsh Wars began. By the 16th century a fish pool had been established to provide food.  During 1720s William Tarbox sold the properties to Packington Tomkins, who let it to tenant farmers.  By 1850 it was a large three-storey house, a two bay wing, contained a household of 20 family and servants. The house had been brick rebuilt in 1800 incorporating some timber-framing.  Both Tomkins and Higginson extended the house in the Victorian era before it changed hands again to a farmer in 1922.
  The apple tree enclosure was the cultivated nature of Mapleton Barn when first settled in the late 13th century. A yeoman farmer took on the orchards, livestock in Jacobean period, but was merged by tenant farmer John Smith with Newbarns in 1777.
  Three large blocks comprised The Rhea in 1838, the forerunner of a much larger complex in the late 20th century.  In 1851 Thomas Gardiner farmed the land of 220 acres with 7 labourers.  A brick house was built in 1900, with several 19th century workers stone cottages.  A timber-framed stone barn was erected in the 18th century for a cow byre and stone stables.
  On 'beech hill' in Elizabethan times Buckenhill Manor was recorded as two virgates.  But during the early modern period a succession of different owners added farms and acreage to the estate.  A Jacobean farmhouse was remodelled: the fine Georgian mansion at Buckenhill was inherited by Mrs Elizabeth Barneby, which unusually she passed to her daughter, Mrs Phillips.  The house itself possessed 15 fireplaces, for the duration that royalist Barnebys owned it, but was later altered by an influential Bromyard propertied man Packington Tomkins.  Made of mellow brick and constructed in 1730, a 9 bay wing was added to face south; a string course on the first floor.  The matching brick style encasing the older house of plasterwork and panelling meant the new and principal wing of the house would have pedimented gables, attics and cellars.  The Victorian clock tower to the rear was erected in 1840 by Edmund Higginson.  The landscape park was dug with a lake in place, damming the River Frome to create a garden oasis. Towards the Tenbury Road three attractive lodges were built in the late 19th century.
  Corinthian capitals atop decorated columns were in the same school as Inkberrow and Bromsberrow Place in the neighbouring county. The older east and front wings were made of stone; bent or chamfered roof beams vacated space in loft for living.  Amongst the extensive stabling and outbuildings were hop kilns, a brewhouse, bakehouse and cider house, and octagonal dove cote.  But the house was dilapidated by 1939 when occupied by the evacuated Westminster School.
  Buckenhill Grange was a L-shaped 1750 farmhouse built in the Dutch style with gables out of coarse-hewn stone. On the west gable of this home farm was added a modelled barn with strong diagonal bracings.  It had a granary below which was a cobble-stone farm yard for free-range hens.  The Buckenhill Mill was acquired by purchase by Thomas Tomkins, son of Packington in 1728.
caption: Looking from Bromyard and Winslow parish towards Buckenhill Manor in Norton parish
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