Brocket Hall

Lord Palmerston died at Brocket Hall on 18 October 1865, still Prime Minister, in the house his wife had inherited from her brother. That brother was Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister, whose own wife Lady Caroline Lamb had scandalised London with Byron half a century earlier. Few English houses can claim two prime ministers and a literary scandal; Brocket Hall, near Welwyn in Hertfordshire, can, and the red-brick house that James Paine built for the Lambs in the 1760s now takes paying guests.

History

Sir Matthew Lamb, a lawyer who had made a fortune, bought the Brocket estate in 1746 and commissioned Paine to replace the old hall. Work ran from 1760 into the 1770s. His son Peniston, the first Viscount Melbourne, and Peniston's wife Elizabeth made it a Whig house where the Prince of Wales, later George IV, was a frequent guest. Their son William Lamb married Caroline Ponsonby in 1805; her affair with Byron in 1812 and the novel she wrote about it, Glenarvon, made her the most talked-about woman in England. Legend says she had herself served to Byron at a Brocket dinner in a silver tureen; the story is told in the house but cannot be proved.

William Lamb became second Viscount Melbourne and Prime Minister in 1834, and Queen Victoria, who leaned on him in her first years on the throne, visited Brocket. His sister Emily, Lady Cowper, married Palmerston in 1839 and the estate passed to them in 1848. After Palmerston's death the house was let, among others to Lord Mount Stephen, the Scots-Canadian railway financier. The Nall-Cain family bought it in 1923 and became Barons Brocket. In 1996 the third Lord Brocket was imprisoned for insurance fraud over his car collection, and the estate was let on a long lease to a hospitality company that turned it into the golf and events business it is now.

Architecture and design

Paine's house is a plain Palladian block of red brick, seven bays wide, with a pediment and a rusticated basement, placed to be seen across the Broadwater, the lake he formed by damming the River Lea. His bridge of 1770s stone carries the drive over the water. The interiors are richer than the exterior suggests. The Saloon, now the Ballroom, has a ceiling painted by John Hamilton Mortimer and Francis Wheatley and chimneypieces of Paine's own design. The Prince Regent's bedroom keeps the bed made for his visits, and the Chinese Room its hand-painted wallpaper.

Rooms and suites

The hall has 16 bedrooms, named after people connected with the house and furnished with antiques, and they are let with exclusive use of the hall or to golf and event guests. Melbourne Lodge, a separate building by the first tee, provides a further set of bedrooms of a simpler kind for golfers and conference delegates. This is not a hotel with a reception desk open to passing trade; stays are booked around an event, a round of golf or a private hire.

Dining

Auberge du Lac occupies the former hunting lodge on the far shore of the Broadwater, with the hall across the water from its terrace. It opened in 2003 with Jean-Christophe Novelli, who won a Michelin star there, and later held one again under Phil Thompson. The hall's own dining room and the Ballroom are used for private dinners when the house is hired.

Weddings and events

Brocket Hall is licensed for civil ceremonies and hosts weddings in the Ballroom, with drinks on the terrace above the lake and photographs on Paine's bridge. Exclusive use gives a wedding party the whole hall and its 16 bedrooms. Meetings and conferences use the same rooms and Melbourne Lodge, and the estate also runs clay shooting and other field sports for corporate groups.

Wellness

The estate's attraction is outdoors: two 18-hole golf courses, the Melbourne, designed by Peter Alliss and Clive Clark and opened in 1992, and the Palmerston, designed by Donald Steel. There is no spa.

Location

The estate lies between Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield, 25 miles north of London, with the A1(M) a few minutes away. Welwyn Garden City station is the nearest, with trains to London King's Cross in about half an hour. London Luton is the nearest airport, roughly 15 miles to the west, and Stansted and Heathrow are each about an hour by road. For a wedding within reach of London that wants a prime minister's house rather than a luxury hotel in London itself, Brocket is the usual answer.