Elżbietańska posiadłość wiejska - Andreas von Einsiedel

PARHAM PARK Parham nestled into around a thousand acres of wooded parkland beneath the South Downs is rated as one of the country's top twenty houses by Simon Jenkins in his England's One Thousand Best Houses. Although the present house dates from the late sixteenth century, the descendants of only three families have lived in the property since the foundation stone was laid by two year old Thomas Palmer in 1577. In 1540 upon the Dissolution of the Monasteries Act , his great grandfather Robert Palmer had been granted the manor of Parham by Henry VIII and the splendid Elizabethan house commissioned by Thomas' parents, was completed around 1583. The young Thomas inherited the property in 1586 and having been knighted after the Battle of Cadiz in 1596, he leased the estate in 1598 to Sir Thomas Bisshopp, who duly bought it for L4,500 in 1601. The Bishopps and their descendents were to own Parham for over three hundred years until following World War I, Mary Cecil, the 17th Baroness Lady Zouche of Haryngworth decided to sell the chilly, unmodernized pile which had suffered from years of neglect.