Bramham Park

Bramham Park is a Grade I listed 18th-century country house in Bramham, between Leeds and Wetherby, in West Yorkshire, England.

The house, constructed of magnesian limestone ashlar with stone slate roofs in a classical style, is built to a linear plan with a main range linked by colonnades to flanking pavilions. The main block is of three storeys with a raised forecourt. The house has a 500 acres (200 ha) landscaped park, ornamented by a series of follies and avenues laid out in the 18th-century landscape tradition, and is enclosed by 1,235 acres (500 ha) of arable farmland. Bramham Park is used annually for the Leeds Festival.

The Baroque mansion was built in 1698 for Robert Benson, 1st Baron Bingley. It has remained in the ownership of Benson's descendants since its completion in 1710.^{[full citation needed]} He died with no male heirs and the barony was extinguished. The estate passed into the hands of his son-in-Law George Fox-Lane (c. 1697–1773), who was given the re-created title of Baron Bingley in 1763. His son and heir, the Honourable Robert Fox-Lane, Member of Parliament for York, predeceased him in 1768 and the barony consequently became extinct a second time on his death in 1773. The estate was inherited for life by his illegitimate daughter Mary, who had married Sir John Goodricke of Ribston Hall and died in 1792. It then passed to the first Baron's nephew, James Fox-Lane, who considerably improved the estate.

From him the estate went to his son George Lane-Fox, known as "The Gambler", who was the MP for Beverley. Following a serious fire in 1828 he was obliged to move to nearby Bowcliffe Hall. The Bramham Park house was then left empty and derelict for 80 years until restored for his grandson George Lane-Fox under the supervision of the architect Detmar Blow in about 1908. George became 1st Baron Bingley of the third creation when the title was recreated in 1933, but had four daughters and no sons meaning that the barony was extinguished for the third time upon his death. The house was inherited by his eldest daughter Marcia, whose husband Joe Ward-Jackson adopted the Lane-Fox surname. Their son George Lane Fox (1931–2012), after 20 years in the Household Cavalry, moved into the Hall and put the estate on an up-to-date financial footing, founding the annual Bramham Horse Trials in 1974.

Today it remains a private residence in the hands of George's son, Nick, while the park is the setting for the Horse Trials and the Leeds Festival, which moved to Bramham in 2003. A restricted area of the grounds is kept as gardens and run as a tourist attraction — visitors can also tour the house but only in pre-arranged parties. The house was the filming location for the third series of The Syndicate.

The "York Races" were held at Bramham Moor from the early 1700s and continued to be so until being moved to Knavesmire and thus "giving supremacy to York" by the mid-century. Races continued to be held at Bramham into the late 19th century. The Bramham Moor Hunt remained popular well into the late 20th century and exists as the Badsworth and Bramham Moor Hunt. Princess Mary partook in both the Bramham Moor Hunt and its associated point-to-point races.

Bramham is a product of a grand tour; its creator Robert Benson, later Lord Bingley, completed his formal education with a grand tour in 1697, and whilst in Italy he began to envisage his new mansion in the Palladian manner complemented in a landscaped park, in the fashion made popular by Le Nôtre in France in the late 17th century.

The architect of Bramham is unknown, although it is speculated that Giacomo Leoni was involved (Leoni was responsible for the rebuilding of Lyme Park in an Italianate style in the neighbouring county of Cheshire some years later). However, Leoni did not arrive in England until several years after the completion of Bramham. Other names suggested include those of James Gibbs, Thomas Archer and James Paine. It is known that Paine designed the stables which flank the corps de logis, but the other contenders were too young. The only chronological possibility is Thomas Archer (1668–1743). The most likely scenario is that Bramham is the work of Robert Benson himself, probably working with a local draughtsman. While it is also quite possible that Benson was inspired by drawings taken from Palladio's books, the design of the house suggests that Benson was more inspired by the restrained Baroque style then popular in France, the style in which Mansart's Versailles was constructed between 1678 and 1684. Indeed, it has been speculated that Versaille's landscape architect André le Nôtre had a hand in the design of Bramham's landscaped park.