Brocklesby Park, Grimsby, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

A country house surrounded by early 20th-century formal gardens by Reginald Blomfield, set within a late 18th-century landscape park, lakes, and woodland for which Lancelot Brown, Thomas White, and Humphry Repton provided designs, with buildings by James Wyatt.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Brocklesby Park lies about 10.5 kilometres north of Caistor and about 15 kilometres east of Brigg in a rural part of north Lincolnshire, about 8 kilometres inland from the Humber estuary. The roughly 600 hectare site is composed of a large body of parkland with a sinuous woodland, cut through with rides, extending southwards for some 6.5 kilometres. The main park is partly bounded to the east and north-east by the B1211 Keelby to Ulceby road, with the land around Newsham lake surrounded by farmland. To the south the boundary is formed by Great Limber village, to the south-west by a minor country road, and to the north-west by farmland. The site lies on the chalk hills of the Lincolnshire Wolds and slopes northwards and westwards to the flat coastal plain around Immingham. There are several major views between garden buildings within the site, and from Newsham Lodge a long view over the lakes south-east towards the house.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

W White, Directory of Lincolnshire (1856), pp 659-60

Surtees Society 24, (1870), 'The diary of Abraham de la Pryme: the Yorkshire antiquary'

Country Life, 75 (24 February 1934), pp 192-8; (3 March 1934), pp 218-24; 78 (13 July 1935), p 31

B Jones, Follies & Grottoes (1974), pp 205-6

D Stroud, Capability Brown (1975), pp 160-1, 173, 218, plates 59a, 59b

N Pevsner et al, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire (2nd edition 1989), pp 188-91

T A Leach, Lincolnshire Country Houses and their Families II, (1991), pp 122-50

J Popham, Brocklesby Estate, Heritage landscape management plan (1995)

D Robinson, Lincolnshire Bricks (1999), p 26

R Turner, Capability Brown and the 18th-century English landscape (1999), pp 65, 167, 175

Maps

L Brown, A plan for the intended alteration ..., 1771 (reproduced in Stroud 1975))

T White, Plan for the improvement of Brocklesby ..., around 1780 (reproduced in Stroud 1975)

Estate map, 1834 (private collection)

Estate map, 1853 (private collection)

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1886, published 1891; 2nd edition published 1908

Archival items

The extensive Brocklesby/Yarborough archive is housed partly at Lincolnshire Archives and partly in a private collection.
 

Description written: October 2000

Redrafted: May 2001

Edited: May 2002