Brocket Hall

Brocket Hall is a neo-classical country house set in a large park at the western side of the urban area of Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire, England.

Gian was a lifelong friend and confidante of the Duchess's daughter, Mary of Teck, the wife of King George V, and the Mount Stephenses regularly entertained the royal couple.

Lady Mount Stephen was a close friend of Georgina Gascoyne-Cecil, Marchioness of Salisbury, who lived on the neighbouring estate, Hatfield House.

[10] After the death of the 7th Earl Cowper (1905), the underlying future reversion was left to his niece, but she died only a year after him (1906) and the estate passed to her husband, Admiral Lord Walter Kerr, who lived at Melbourne Hall.

When the life tenant Lord Mount Stephen died in 1921, Kerr put the estate up for sale, and in 1923 it was purchased by Sir Charles Nall-Cain, who co-ran the brewing company Walker Cain Ltd; he was created Baron Brocket in 1933.

His son, Ronald Nall-Cain, 2nd Baron Brocket, was a Nazi sympathiser;[11] he was interned during the Second World War, and his property was sequestrated and put to use as a maternity hospital.

CCA converted Brocket Hall into a hotel and conference centre, built a second eighteen-hole golf course and developed a restaurant called Auberge du Lac in an existing building on the estate.

[17] Next to the weir is a neoclassical bridge, often described as Palladian, which carries an approach drive across the river: it is faced in Portland stone and was designed by Paine.