Origins
Browsholme was ‘H’ shaped, having a central hall with the parlour wing to the west and kitchens to the east; by 1591, when an inventory was taken, twenty-four rooms were listed including the ‘Schole Chamber’, ‘Paynted Chamber’ and ‘Maydens Chamber’. After 1603 the front was refaced in rusticated pink sandstone and the central portico added displaying the orders of architecture; Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. A hundred years later the small Queen Anne wing was added to the east. This provided a second staircase, a new kitchen below and a bedroom and closet above.
The final transformation was in the early nineteenth century when Thomas Lister Parker removed the front of the west wing rebuilding on the same ground plan a grand regency drawing room and erected a single storey portrait gallery, now the main dining room.
The Hall
The Hall, dating back to the original house built after 1507, was once sixty-eight feet long and is arguably the finest surviving antiquarian interior in England. The many and varied antiquities on view include a buff coat as worn by Captain Thomas Whittingham, killed at the Battle of Newbury fighting for the king; the dog stirrup reputedly used as a gauge to control dogs in the Forest of Bowland and safeguard the deer, a skull believed to be a Martyr from the Pilgrimage of Grace, a peg tankard said to have been in use since about the reign of Edward III, medieval stained glass and a fragment of a Zeppelin shot down in 1916 and given to the family as a souvenir.