Breamore House

Locals correct the pronunciation before they correct anything else. Breamore, the village on the Avon just off the north-west edge of the New Forest, is Bremmer, and the Elizabethan house above it is still a family home.

Finished in 1583 for the Dodington family, the manor was sold in 1748 to Sir Edward Hulse, physician to Queen Anne and to George I and George II. It has stayed with the Hulses since. Sir Michael Hulse calls it home to nine generations of his family. The drive comes in through the lion gates, past a yew put at a thousand years old, and the terrace looks towards the Avon valley.

House visits are guided tours on the days the estate lists, not a free wander. The rooms on show include the great hall, drawing rooms and bedrooms, with paintings, tapestries and furniture left in place, among them a rare James I carpet. The tour ends in the Victorian kitchen. Just outside, a tower with a cupola reads as a church until you are told it is the water tower, built when running water was brought in by gravity.

The ordinary-day stop is the courtyard. The Countryside Museum, started in the 1970s by Sir Edward Hulse, fills a run of barns with a dairy, a smithy, a cider house, a schoolroom and a cottage, plus tractors, traction engines and barn machinery. Classic cars come out for the steam working weekend in May, with the engines and local food.

The farm shop and the Pantry Barn café share that yard, so a visit can be a tour, an hour with the machinery, or breakfast without a booking. The café also takes small bookings.

St Mary’s stands in the trees just below, a Saxon church of about 1000, with Hulse funeral hatchments on the walls. House, museum and café do not keep the same days, so check the estate site before setting out.