Brooklands

Brooklands is a large house on Bridge Road, Sarisbury, built around 1800 by the architect John Nash for Sir Thomas Williams, who later became an Admiral. The building has undergone several significant alterations and additions over its history.

The house is constructed of partly red brick, partly stuccoed, and partly painted brick, with a slate roof and brick chimneys. It is irregular in plan, rising to two or three storeys. A service wing was added to the north west in 1807. In 1858, when the house acquired a more Italianate appearance, Langdon of the Isle of Wight added a two-bay addition over the porch. A small extension to the south east was added by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1916.

The architectural detail is highly distinctive. A paired bracket eaves cornice and unusual band between the second and third floors characterise the building. The west front entrance is stuccoed with the two-bay addition over the porch featuring incised lines to the ground floor. The main windows include six-pane sashes to the second floor and twelve-pane sashes to the first floor, though the ground floor features a Doric portico flanked by round-headed side lights. The south west corner has a curved bow rising through all three floors, topped with a conical roof and panels above the first floor window. A loggia of ten Doric columns on the ground floor, installed by Langdon to replace an earlier verandah, follows the curve of the bow. The south front is two storeys of red brick with four windows and cemented architraves to the first floor windows. The east front is fairly irregular with six windows, mainly twelve-paned sashes. The north front, being the service wing of 1807, has four cambered sashes including two tripartite sashes on the ground floor.

The interior contains exceptional decorative features. A fine early 19th-century staircase has cast iron balusters, stone treads, and a mahogany handrail, with dado panelling. The dining room features an early 19th-century cornice of carved oak leaves with vine and grape decoration and masks, together with a fine painted ceiling depicting fabulous birds and crossed flageolets. There is dado rail and two overmantels with ovolo moulding and beading surrounds. The drawing room has a most unusual cornice with ivy entwining Neptune's trident (a subtle reference to Admiral Williams), two sea horses, and a band of shells beneath, with a ceiling rose of the same pattern. It contains a panelled wall with a six-panelled door and a wooden fireplace with modified Ionic capitals and urn and foliage pilasters with a marble inner surround. The drawing room was lined in limed oak by Sir Basil Ionides in 1916 when Lutyens added the porch. The library has a cornice with plumed capitals and a mid-19th-century marble fireplace with anthemion and foliage decoration.

The first floor includes a room known as Jane Austen's bedroom, named after the Admiral's first wife who was Jane Austen's cousin. This bedroom has a marble fire surround with reeding and paterae and an iron firegrate with reeded frame, lion's head marking and curved firebasket, together with a plumed cornice and six-panelled door. The principal bedroom has a cornice of nymphs holding wreaths with wheat ear and harebell motifs, and a marble fireplace with anthemion motifs and reeded pilasters. An adjoining bedroom to the south west has a marble fireplace and coved cornice. Another bedroom has a wooden fireplace with shell and foliage frieze and brackets with harebell origins. Two interesting bathrooms of 1916 were installed by Sir Basil Ionides. The yellow bathroom retains original sanitary fittings and yellow tiles with signs of the zodiac made by a member of the Bloomsbury Group. There is also a bathroom with marble basin and bath. The second floor contains a room with a wooden fireplace with firegrate and a bathroom with handmade fish-decorated tiles and original fittings designed by Sir Hugh Casson in the 1930s.

The house has strong literary and artistic associations. Jane Austen and A A Milne stayed at Brooklands frequently. The landscape gardener Gertrude Jekyll laid out the grounds. South Brooklands and the Gazebo form a group with Brooklands.