Brewhurst House
Brewhurst House is believed to date from around 1400. The date appears in the sale particulars issued in 1932, which described the residence as an old Sussex farmhouse believed to have been erected in 1400 and noted the quantity of old oak within the building. The documentary record is also early: the Brewhurst deeds begin in 1456 and by 1503 the holding included a messuage, or dwelling.
The house has been altered many times. It was first listed at Grade II on 22 February 1955 under the name Brewhurst Farmhouse. The statutory description records an L-shaped timber-framed building of the seventeenth century or earlier, with painted brick infilling, fish-scale tile hanging to the first floor, a hipped Horsham-slab roof, casement windows and a gabled porch.
A 2016 building assessment dated the main surviving two-storey timber-framed ranges to about 1700 and recorded extensive reuse of older timbers.
1456-1720 – Bruers and Bruhurst
The earliest document in the Brewhurst Estate Deeds is dated 29 November 1456. Thomas Warham and his two sons then held the land as feudal tenants of the Manor of Bury. A record of 1503 describes a messuage or dwelling, a toft or homestead, meadow, pasture and woodland.
In 1554 John Myll senior granted to his son John Myll junior a messuage called Bruers, identified in the Brewhurst records as the property later known as Brewhurst. The grant included barns, stables and a watermill. The Myll or Mille family continued to own the property through the seventeenth century.
In 1703 John Mille, a London merchant, inherited the messuage called Bruhurst with stables, orchards, barns, gardens and two mills. The main surviving frame dates from about this period and consists of two joined two-storey ranges with a large brick inglenook fireplace at the south end. A bread oven formerly stood behind the fireplace.
In 1720 the Brewhurst property was sold to Richard Pay of Kirdford. A further two-storey timber-framed range was added at the north end about 1750. It retains a large bread oven at ground-floor level, and parts of its east wall were rebuilt in brick with an external chimney stack.
The Seward family and Edward Napper
Richard Pay leased Brewhurst to the Seward family, who purchased the property in 1784. John Seward, a yeoman farmer, occupied Brewhurst in the middle of the eighteenth century. His son Thomas Seward was born at Brewhouse or Brewhurst in 1748 and later took over the family holding. The 1785 Land Tax return names Miss Seward as owner and Thomas Seward as occupier.
Around 1800 a two-storey cross-wing was added at the south end of the house. It is built mainly in brick with some stone.
In 1803 Anne Seward, owner of the Brewhurst holding, married Edward Napper of Rudgwick. Edward and Anne Napper lived at Ifold House, while members of the Seward family continued at Brewhurst for a time. Ownership of Brewhurst then passed into the Napper family, who retained the property during the first part of the Botting tenancy.
The Botting household at Brewhurst
Henry Botting took a lease of Brewhurst between 1821 and 1827. He had been baptised at Wiston on 29 January 1793 and married Mary Knight at Slinfold on 20 October 1811. Their eldest son, also Henry Botting, was born at Slinfold in 1812. The younger Henry later farmed Headsfoldwood and became Loxwood’s first churchwarden when the separate parish was formed in 1873. Henry Botting of Brewhurst was therefore the father of Henry Botting of Headsfoldwood.
Another son, John Botting, was born in 1816 and later headed one of the Brewhurst households. John was the father of Maurice Botting, so Maurice was a grandson of Henry Botting of Brewhurst and a nephew of Henry Botting of Headsfoldwood.
The 1841 census records Henry Botting, aged forty-five, at Brewhurst with his wife Mary, aged fifty, and their daughters Ann and Emily. The household also contained William Sturt, a fifteen-year-old miller’s apprentice, three agricultural labourers, two female servants and another miller, William Cooper.
The following year the Wisborough Green tithe map provided the first detailed plan of the house. Plot 524 was owned by Edward Napper and occupied by Henry Botting. The apportionment names it specifically as ‘Brewhurst House, offices, yards & buildings’. The plan places the house with its yards and outbuildings on the same site occupied by the present building.
By 1851 Henry Botting was fifty-eight and was farming 250 acres. Mary was sixty-four, and their daughters Emily, Elizabeth and Sarah and their son William were living at home. Another miller, two general servants, a miller’s servant and three agricultural labourers were also recorded in the household. In 1861 Henry was still at Brewhurst, aged sixty-eight, farming 258 acres and employing eight men and two boys.
Henry Botting died on 27 March 1864. His sons continued at Brewhurst. The 1871 census records William Botting farming 228 acres and a second Brewhurst household headed by John Botting, whose large family included sons who also entered the family farming and milling business.
Maurice and Emily Botting
By 1881 the census identifies Sydney Botting in the farm house with his wife Louisa and their children. Maurice Botting, aged twenty-seven, was recorded in a second Brewhurst household with his wife Emily, their infant daughter Edith, his brother Thomas and two other household members. Sydney later moved to Loxwood Place, and Maurice was the likely resident of Brewhurst Farm by 1882.
The 1891 census records Maurice Botting, aged thirty-eight, with Emily and their daughters Edith, Mary and Alice. Maurice’s brother Thomas Henry Botting was also in the household, together with two general servants. The front porch had been added by 1895.
Maurice Botting also held several positions in Loxwood. He served on the local School Board, chaired Loxwood Parish Council for many years, became a churchwarden and chaired the Loxwood Chapel trustees and the committee responsible for the annual Loxwood agricultural show. The 1896 conveyance of the Reading Room site names Maurice Botting of Brewhurst as one of its five trustees.
In 1900 Maurice Botting and his elder brother John Botting of Wanford purchased Brewhurst through two mortgages totalling £7,150. The 1901 census records Maurice and Emily at Brewhurst with daughters Edith and Alice, sons Maurice and Ernest, Maurice’s brother Thomas Henry and two domestic servants.
A photograph dated 1909 and captioned ‘Mill House, Loxwood’ records the appearance of the dwelling during the Botting period. Ivy covered much of the front, the Horsham-slab roof was prominent and the gabled porch stood at the centre of the elevation. Early twentieth-century photographs also use the name Brewhurst Mill House for the residence.
The 1911 census does not give a house name for Maurice and Emily Botting, but records them in a nine-room house in Loxwood with their children Mary, Alice, Maurice and Ernest and a domestic servant. Maurice later moved to Hillside in Loxwood High Street, now known as Finches.
1932 – Brewhurst House for sale
The wider Brewhurst property was offered in portions after the Botting period, and by 1932 Brewhurst House was being marketed as a residential property with about three acres. The sale particulars described it as an old Sussex farmhouse believed to have been erected about 1400.
The main ground-floor room was a lounge hall measuring about twenty-five feet by fifteen feet. There was a dining room about seventeen feet by fifteen feet and two further sitting rooms. Upstairs were eight bedrooms, the three largest measuring about seventeen feet by sixteen feet, fifteen feet by fifteen feet and fourteen feet by thirteen feet. The house also contained a bathroom, service rooms and a dairy, and one room was half-panelled.
Water came from a well with a pump, lighting was by lamps and drainage went to a cesspool. The grounds included a tennis lawn, flower garden, two small kitchen gardens, one of them walled, an orchard and a paddock. A north-end outbuilding dated to about 1920 corresponds with the single garage advertised in 1932. The freehold asking price was £3,500.
On 9 September 1932 a newspaper notice recorded Major F. E. Hill at Brewhurst as a new telephone subscriber with the number Loxwood 56. The following day the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer reported that Brewhurst had been sold by private treaty. The newspaper described the house as dating from Tudor times, with old oak beams and open fireplaces. In December the same newspaper again reported the disposal of the historic old house called Brewhurst.
The Riley-Smith family and Brewhurst Stud
From about 1950 Brewhurst became the home of William Henry Douglas Riley-Smith and his wife Elspeth Agnes Mary Riley-Smith. Douglas came from the Tadcaster brewing family and later became chairman of John Smith’s Brewery. Brewhurst also became the base of the family’s racehorse breeding stud.
The house was listed at Grade II in 1955. During the 1950s a two-storey brick extension was added at the south-east corner, providing additional accommodation and a self-contained annexe.
The Riley-Smith family’s involvement with racehorses had begun with Douglas’s father in 1920. Over the following decades the family bred a succession of successful horses. One of the most important was Tenacity, owned by Mrs Riley-Smith and trained by Sir Gordon Richards. In 1961, ridden by Scobie Breasley, Tenacity won the Yorkshire Oaks at York and the Princess Royal Stakes at Ascot.
Another Brewhurst horse was King Log, owned and bred by Douglas and Elspeth Riley-Smith. He ran in the Derby at Epsom in 1965 and later that summer won the Gordon Stakes at Goodwood, ridden by Ron Hutchinson. The following year King Log was entered for the Magnet Cup at York, a race sponsored by John Smith’s Brewery. One of the earlier horses in the family’s breeding line had been named Ela Tengam, simply ‘Magnet Ale’ written backwards.
Douglas Riley-Smith died at Brewhurst on 9 January 1981. Elspeth Riley-Smith later gave stained-glass windows to the Church of St John the Baptist in Loxwood. The south-east window in the nave commemorates her parents, Sir John and Lady Craik-Henderson, while windows in the north aisle commemorate Douglas Riley-Smith. They were designed and made by Penelope Neave.
The Brewhurst property was divided and sold in separate lots in 1984, but Elspeth Riley-Smith continued as a racehorse owner. In 1987 Sergeyevich, trained by John Dunlop and ridden by Willie Carson, won the Goodwood Cup. The following year Sergeyevich finished second in the Ascot Gold Cup after Royal Gait, first past the post, was disqualified; Sadeem was awarded the race and Sergeyevich was promoted to second.
Brewhurst House in 1995
Brewhurst was again advertised in The Field in May 1995. The article recorded the stud as the breeder of a Yorkshire Oaks winner and of winners in English and French races. The Grade II house then had six bedrooms and a two-bedroom annexe. The larger property also included a cottage, three stable yards containing twenty-two boxes and sixty-one acres of paddocks, woodland and formal gardens.
The whole property was offered at £900,000 and divided into eleven lots by Knight Frank & Rutley. Brewhurst House and its gardens formed a separate lot with a guide price of £560,000.
