Branston Hall

Branston Hall is a country house in the village of Branston, Lincolnshire, England. The hall, a Grade II listed building, is set in 88 acres (3.56 square kilometres) of wooded parkland and lakes.Originally commissioned as the family seat of the Melville family, the house became an RAF hospital during the Second World War, and then a sanatorium run by Lindsey County Council. It lay derelict in the 1970s and 1980s, underwent restoration and conversion into a retirement home in the late 1980s, and is now restored and converted into a hotel.Designed by John Macvicar Anderson in 1885, the house was built in Elizabethan Revival style.Early historyThe original old hall was built in 1735 for Lord Vere Bertie the son of the 1st Duke of Ancaster. He had married Anne Casey, who had inherited the Branston property from her father Sir Cecil Wray. The couple had four children. Lord Vere Bertie died in 1768 and his wife Anne continued to live at the house until her death in 1779. The property was then passed to their daughter Albinia who had married George Hobart, 3rd Earl of Buckinghamshire. In 1829 the house was advertised for sale and it seems that shortly after this it was purchased by Alexander Leslie Melville