OLD HOUSES

Evening Star, Issue 22460, 3 October 1936, Page 2

OLD HOUSES

One of the oldest inhabited houses in England has just been sold, but is to remain in possession of the family which, has owned it for centuries, writes the London diarist of the ‘ Evening Standard.’ It is Brede Place, the medieval house, in Sussex, of Commander Oswald Erewen. Commander, Frewen, who is a cousin of Mr Winston Churchill, was oix the point of closing with an offer for the house when his nephew, Mr Richard Brinsley Sheridan, happened to arrive and bought it on the spot for the same sum. Brede was built in the reign or Edward HI., and is haunted by the ghost of its fifteenth century’ owner, Sir, Goddard Oxenbridge. Ho used it, it is said, to hang his children on a took in what is still called the gallows room. While the National Trust is receiving an encouraging response to its new, scheme for saving English country, houses and opening them to the public,certain country house owners, however poor, arc obstinately reluctant to countenance any such scheme for their salvation. The other day an anonymous donor offered, for the nation’s benefit,, to purchase for £IOO,OOO any house of sufficient historical interest, but to allow the present owners to continue to live in it as tenants. . Not .a single response' to this handsome offer has yet been-received. , -