Bramley House

In 1848 the Jekyll family moved to Bramley House in Surrey, three miles south-east of Guildford. Gertrude spent her childhood exploring the local area. She wrote “I was always strong and active in my limbs … I had no girl companions … It was therefore natural that I should be more of a boy than a girl in my ideas and activities, delighting to go up trees, and to play cricket, and take wasps' nests after dark, and do dreadful things with gunpowder … but when my brothers went to school I had to find my own amusements.” With the “dear old pony, Toby, and the dog Crim” she would “wander away into the woods and heaths and along the little lanes and bye-paths of [the] beautiful country.”

At Bramley House, as well as exploring the extensive main gardens of the house which included “a large rambling shrub garden with broad turf paths” and “two parterres with spring flowers, followed by the usual bedding plants and some well-filled plant-houses”, Gertrude and her sister were given their own gardens, long strips of ground end to end, backed by a bank topped by a hazel hedge, with a shallow ditch at its foot, and divided by a hedge of sweet-peas. The “cool face of the bank was a grand place for Ferns and Foxgloves, Primroses and Columbines”.

In 1904, Miss Jekyll commissioned Sir Edwin Lutyens to design Millmead as a speculative development where she created the gardens.

To quote part of the listed building description from Historic England, Millmead is a "small Country House dating from 1904-7 by Sir Edwin Lutyens for Gertrude Jekyll, in mixed Vernacular and early Georgian classical styles. Coursed and part snecked Bargate sandstone with red brick quoins and dressings, some tile-on-edge decorations over windows and to the eaves, plain tiled roofs, some hipped, sweeping down to eaves and hipped out over dormers".

Country Life Magazine dated May 11th 1907 featured an article on Millmead House. A copy of the four page write up with black and white illustrations and sketch drawings of the house (exterior and interior) is available from Knight Frank.

Owned by our clients for over 50 years, Millmead now provides a rare opportunity to purchase a piece of architectural and gardening history which although requiring modernisation, has the most incredible bones and architectural features in which to create a perfect family house.

Millmead is situated in a fantastic village setting on the south-western edge of Bramley, which offers a good range of shops for everyday needs, 2 churches and public houses. More extensive facilities are available in Guildford, which is about 3.5 miles to the north, offering a wide range of shopping, educational and recreational facilities including the Yvonne Arnaud theatre and the Spectrum Leisure Centre. The A3 at Guildford provides easy access to London and connections to the national motorway network, Heathrow and Gatwick airports.

There are excellent schools within the area including St. Catherine's in Bramley, Priorsfield and Charterhouse in Godalming and Cranleigh School in Cranleigh.

The surrounding countryside is some of the finest in the county and includes the Thorncombe Valley which is very close to the house.

Marketed by: Knight Frank, Guildford