The property changed hands several times over the centuries, coming into the ownership of George Wither in 1620,[2] who added to it "estates in five other manors as well as the advowsons of two churches".

[4] Wither Bramston (born 1753),[5] demolished the old building and completed Oakley Hall in 1795,[6][7] after his marriage to Mary Chute of The Vyne.

[8] Notable residents have included William Wither Bramston Beach (1826–1901), a Conservative politician, and the early amateur photographer Jane Martha St. John (1801–1882) who lived with her husband in the estate's Oakley Cottage.

[7][10][11] A national school, accommodating 120 students, was built in nearby Oakley on the property of W. W. Bramston Beach in 1855 and by 1872, it was expanded.

[14] According to a biographer of Jane Austen this hobby was recalled years later when she described three similar transparencies as adornments of Fanny Price’s East Room at Mansfield Park.

[13] In the same letter she mentioned that Mary Bramston promised to give her two medicinal plants called heartsease “one all yellow and one all purple”.