"Richard Muirhead's tiny smokehouse in the grounds of Brougham Hall is a local treasure. Most of the ingredients come from within Cumbria. The smoked salmon is superb, some of the best I have tasted".
Rose Prince
Food & Drink Daily Telegraph
History of Brougham Hall
“Colourful” barely begins to describe the goings on at Brougham Hall throughout the centuries. but there’s just as much light and shade in the 500-year history of the site itself. The Hall’s fame (and not infrequent notoriety) reached its height in the period from 1830 to the early 1900s.
Brougham Hall was dubbed by Victorians as the “Windsor of the North”. Its physical presence and fine elevated position above a broad river were two obvious similarities. But Brougham Hall’s long connection with royalty provided the real link. King George V (as he later became) was a regular guest, and so was King Edward V11 whose sporting interests in Cumbria, it was rumoured, covered a broad range of different quarries.
Gothic
There is a decidedly gothic stamp on many of the buildings and features, but look more closely and you will soon find many earlier design references which bear witness to the existence on this site of a fortified home since 1480.
Following the collapse of the family finances in the early 1930s, Brougham Hall passed out of the family in 1934. It fell into ruin. Restoration was begun in 1985 and is ongoing.
It is within the walls of this historic building that we have built our smokehouse with each bite of our produce you are tasting history
Church
The delightful Cromwellian chapel alongside Brougham Hall holds many more stories for the visitor.
Memorial
This tablet is erected to the memory of the officers and men who served at Brougham Hall between July 1942 and June 1944 on the secret Canal Defence Light Tank project in World War 2. These men were drawn from the 1st and 35th Tank Brigades of the 79th Armoured Division and were supported by the R.E.M.E who left in 1945
