User:Noswall59/The Grange, Broadhembury condensed

Descent of the manor
The Domesday Book of 1086 records that, on the death of Edward the Confessor, Brictric, son of Algar, held Broadhembury. But, by 1086 a man named Odo, son of Gamelin, held a fee in the hundred of Sulfretona incorporating the settlements of Broadhembury and Plymtree. In 1166 Geoffrey de Hembury held Broadhembury for 1 fee of William de Toriton (d. 1233), nephew of William, son of Odo; William sold Broadhembury to William Briwere (d. 1227), who gave it to Dunkeswell Abbey (of which he was a founder) sometime before he died. The modern estate is so named because it had been Dunkeswell Abbey's grange before the dissolution. At the dissolution of the abbey, the lands were surrendered to the King in 1539. In the following July, Broadhembury was included among a royal grant of lands to John Russell, Baron Russell. However, shortly afterwards, the land reverted to the Crown, probably in exchange for other former monastic estates. In c. 1545, the king granted the manor and lands in Broadhembury to Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton.

The Grange was later acquired the Drewes of Sharpham and Killerton. J. L. Vivian records that Thomas Drewe "received Queen Elizabeth at the Grange". Other accounts state that his son, Edward Drew, purchased The Grange from Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, the grandson of the Earl who was granted it. Edward began work on building a house on the site. After his death, the estate passed through his heirs male until the death of Major-General Francis Edward Drewe in 1891. On his death The Grange was inherited by his sister Adéle Caroline, the wife of John Arthur Locke (died 1888), of North Moor House in Dulverton. After she died in 1895, the estate passed to her eldest son, Arthur Charles Edward Locke, who subsequently sold it. Colonel Henry Bowden Gundry purchased the Grange in 1903; in 1914, he is listed as the lord of the manor. He died, still lord of the manor, in 1916. The estate was put up for sale again in 1921, but Gundry's son, Henry Edward Bowden Gundry, was still living at the Grange ten years later; he put the house, along with 500 acres of land, up for sale in 1964. By the time he died in 1966, he was living at Bowerwood. In 1997, Martin and Lindy Evans bought the house and refurbished it, before putting it up for sale in 2000. The house sold for £1 million. By 2009, it was owned by the television presenter Kirstie Allsopp.