The grade I Jacobean house at Bramshill is set within a grade II* park and garden. It became the home of the National College of Policing after the Second World War. In 2012 the Home Secretary decided to sell the property to the private sector, while ensuring that its heritage value was unaffected.

acta prepared a conservation plan and management proposals to be approved by English Heritage and form part of the conditions of sale of the property. The central issues were:

• completion and agreement within three months
• identifying the resources and standards needed to retain the existing high quality of historic landscape conservation
• the constraints and opportunities in re-developing the college buildings.

Landscape analysis defined the areas:

• which made best use of landform and vegetation
• where reducing the volume or footprint of the buildings would have greatest benefit.

The project also assessed the opportunities for clearing secondary woodland to reinstate parkland and heathland adjacent to a SSSI.

1. Bramshill is one of the most imposing Jacobean mansions in the region and its setting is largely intact
2. The pond and earthworks of the seventeenth-century Italian Garden survive, now absorbed within the park
3. A herd of white fallow deer is one of Bramshill’s most famous features. It is an integral feature of the management of the park
4. Several phases of new college buildings have impaired the setting of the mansion and park and redevelopment is an opportunity to correct this