Was Wikipedia dazu zu sagen hat *g* :
Ashburnham Place is an English country house, five miles west of Battle in East Sussex. It was one of the finest houses in the southeast of England in its heyday, but much was demolished in 1959, and only a drastically reduced part of the building now remains standing. The remaining buildings are used as a Christian conference and prayer centre.
The village of Ashburnham was the home of the Ashburnham family from the 1100s. The family became wealthy through their land holdings in Sussex and around Pembrey in Carmarthenshire, and later from their participation in the Wealden iron industry. Only the cellars remain from the earliest known house on the site, dating from the fifteenth century. This house was abandoned in the sixteenth century and confiscated by Queen Elizabeth I. The Ashburnham family recovered their estate under Charles I, and John Ashburnham was a loyal servant of the King. He was forced to sell the estate to the Relf family in the English Commonwealth, to pay fines levied for supporting the King.
John Ashburnham recovered the estate again after the English Restoration. His grandson and namesake, John Ashburnham, was created 1st Baron Ashburnham in 1689. The house was largely rebuilt, under the Palladian architect Stephen Wright and the local direction of the builder John Morris of Lewes, ca 1757-61. The grounds, covering some 200 acres and including three large lakes around the house, were laid out by Capability Brown in the mid-eighteenth century. Brown's orangery, c. 1767, houses the oldest camellia in England.
By the late nineteenth century, the family was under financial pressure, and offered to sell the library, including its collection of illuminated manuscripts, to the nation in the 1890s for £160,000. The deal did not go ahead, and the books were sold piecemeal for a total of £228,000 over the next few years.
Lady Catherine was the last of the Ashburnham family, and the estate was inherited by Rev. John Bickersteth on her death in 1953. In addition to the prospect of huge repair bills, he was also saddled with crippling death duties of £427,000. The contents of the house were sold at auction at Sotheby's in June and July 1953, and half of the estate was sold in the next few years. The house was mostly demolished in 1959, reducing the central section to two floors and the wings to a single story.
Meanwhile, Bickersteth established a prayer centre in the stable block. He gave the remaining parts of the house, and 220 acres of parkland, to the Ashburnham Christian Trust in April 1960. It is now operated as a Christian conference and prayer centre.
