Broadlands

Broadlands is an English country house, located in the civil parish of Romsey Extra, near the town of Romsey in the Test Valley district of Hampshire, England.

The original manor and area known as Broadlands has belonged to Romsey Abbey since before the time of the 11th-century English Norman Conquest.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Broadlands was sold to Sir Francis Fleming in 1547. His granddaughter married Edward St. Barbe, and the manor remained the property of the St. Barbe family for the next 117 years. Sir John St Barbe, 1st Baronet (c. 1655–1723) made many improvements to the manor but died without progeny having bequeathed it to his cousin Humphrey Sydenham of Combe, Dulverton. In the chancel of Ashington Church, Somerset, is a monument of grey and white marble, inscribed:

Here lies Sir John St. Barbe, Bart. possessed of those amiable qualities, which birth, education, travel, greatness of spirit, and goodness of heart, produce. Interred in the fame vault lies his second wife Alice Fiennes, aunt to the prefent Lord Say and Sele. His first was Honour, daughter of Colonel Norton. He died at his seat of Broadlands in Hampshire Sept. 7, 1723, leaving for his only heir and executor Humphrey Sydenham, esq., of Combe in Somerfetshire, who ordered this marble to his memory.

When Sydenham was ruined by the 18th-century South Sea Bubble, he proceeded to sell Broadlands to Henry Temple, 1st Viscount Palmerston in 1736. It was the latter who began the deformalisation of the gardens between the river and the house and produced the (broad-lands) the "gentle descent to the river".

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