Parham House
Parham House is located in the civil parish of Parham in West Sussex, England. The Elizabethan mansion was built in 1577 upon an estate originally owned by the Monastery of Westminster, but it was granted to Robert Palmer by King Henry VII. Palmer sold the house to the Bysshopp family in 1601. The Bysshopp descendants owned the estate until 1826 when the Pearson family purchased it. The Pearson family spent 60 years restoring the home and filling it with collections of furniture, paintings, textiles, 17th century needlework, and more. During WWII, the house became the home for 30 children evacuated from Peckham in London, after which the War Department requisitioned the estate for Canadian billeting officers. The family continued to live in half of the house, while many of the soldiers were housed in the park’s Nissan huts. The Pearson’s opened the house to the public in 1948. The mansion sits on 300 acres with a four-acre walled garden, a glasshouse, an orchard, a vegetable garden, a garden shop and nursery, a restaurant, a gift shop, and a 1920s playhouse for children. The fallow deer on the property are said to descend from the first herd ever recorded. Parham serves as a family home and is open to the public, but it is currently closed until Easter 2021.Â
