About Bramling
Bramling lies astride the Sandwich road which was turnpiked and realigned in 1802. The fifth milestone survives beside Baker's Cottage opposite Bramling House. The present Bramling House was built by Stephen and Eliza Hilton in 1869. The Hilton family paid for the first Ickham School and they were largely instrumental in providing the shingled spire for Ickham Church. 
Bramling, lying as it does on the main Sandwich to Canterbury road, must have witnessed the passage of most of the Kings and Queens of England to and from their continental journeys. There is a record of one such journey by Queen Elizabeth I who, on an August morning over 400 years ago, came down the hill into Bramling with a bodyguard of picked troopers, while the bells of Littlebourne peeled out and villagers from Ickham and Bramling lined the route. 
On March 13th 1194, Richard I (The Lion-heart) passed through Bramling having landed at Sandwich after his long imprisonment in an Austrian dungeon when returning from fighting in the Holy Land. Likewise there are records of King John, Edward I, Edward IV and Henry VII passing through this small hamlet and laterly, Princess Diana on her visits to her friends at Goodnestone House. 
Bramling is much under-valued unless you come into it slowly, walking and preferably by footpath. It has a lively and successful pub, a thriving woodyard which has been here for many decades, rich agricultural land and farms, a car repair business and the head office and works of Denne the Builders; clearly not a place locked in a time warp nor preserved in aspic but, we are glad to say, still with roses around cottage doors. May all these elements harmoniously co-exist!
Thank you to the Denne Group for allowing us to photograph Bramling House.
Click on the icon below to visit their website.
Click on the icon below to visit their website.
