Sir John St Barbe, 1st Baronet (c. 1655–1723) made many improvements to the property but died without children, bequeathing his estate to his cousin Humphrey Sydenham of Combe, Dulverton.

In the chancel of Ashington Church, Somerset, is a monument of grey and white marble, inscribed:[3] Here lies Sir John St. Barbe, Bart.

He died at his seat of Broadlands in Hampshire Sept. 7, 1723, leaving for his only heir and executor Humphrey Sydenham, esq., of Combe in Somersetshire, who ordered this marble to his memory.Having been ruined by the 18th-century South Sea Bubble, Sydenham sold Broadlands in 1736, with its Tudor and Jacobean manor house, to Henry Temple, 1st Viscount Palmerston, for £26,500.

On his death, the estate passed to a great-nephew, Evelyn Ashley (1836-1907), a younger son of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (1801-1885).

[6] In 1981, the newly married Prince (later Charles III) and Princess of Wales also spent the first three days of their honeymoon at Broadlands, travelling to the estate by train from London Waterloo.