BROUGHTON MANOR/FILLIOLS MANOR
BROUGHTON MANOR
The Broughton family took their name from the nearby village of Broughton.
By 1489 John Broughton was in possession of the Monkswood Tenement of 80 acres of land in Great Crawley which had derived from the Abbot & Monks of St. Pierre de la Couture in 1243 and also Mathias Manor & Filliols Manor.
The Manor of Broughtons by 1595 had some 300 acres of land but the old Broughton Manor House (Manor Farm c22) which had been renovated earlier in the century had become ruinous while in the hands of Richard Morton. Richard had resided in Filliols Manor House (c21) and his widow was allowed the use of it with certain demesne lands for life. Before 1600 Richard or his son Henry had disposed of two large holdings to Anthony Tyringham, the first deriving from Mathias Manor was the Grange (Franklins Farm Estate). The second representing the major portion of the old Filliols demesne with a large farmhouse occupying the site of present day Rookery Farm (c24) was on Broadmead Lane (c6).
In 1625 Henry Morton granted the rest of the estate together with the site of Broughtons Manor House to Richard Stanton who in turn conveyed the estate to William Knight & Brian Harrison who sold it to Bernard Gregory before 1638. On his death it passed to his son Thomas who like his father before him livid in the old Filliol moated Manor House (c21).
It was this Thomas Gregory (or possibly an uncle of the same name who rebuilt and extended the ruinous old Broughton Manor House (c22) adding a new North West Wing commemorated by the initials TG1661 on a stone in the North Wall by the Doorway and the date 1660 carved on the entrance hall in the North West Wing.
Thomas died in 1672 & the property was in Trust to his wife Elizabeth for life. His 3 daughters sold it to William Lowndes in 1718.
After 1704 this was held with Hollowes Manor, last reference to it was in 1775.
Broughton Manor included Franklyns Farm which was sold to Roger Hackett famous rector of North Crawley from 1590 to 1621 and considerable other property in North Crawley later to become the Crawley Grange Estate.
Historian “Browne Willis says:
“Having bought several farms and estates and laid them together he built himself the principle house in the whole parish”.
In 1723 it was sold by Sir Peter King to William Lowndes who settled it on trustees for 99 years with a reversion in tail-male to Richard Lowndes son of his eldest son Robert.
It descended with the Winslow and Whaddon estates until it was purchased in 1803 by Thomas David Boswell the younger brother of Johnson’s biographer.