Broadacre estate

The land at Broadacre was originally part of Packwood parish which in 1086 belonged to Coventry Priory. In 1279 the Prior of Coventry held Packwood and Wasperton under the charter of Edward the Confessor and had at Packwood two carucates (a medieval unit of land area approximating the land a plough team of eight oxen could till in a single annual season) in demesne (a demesne or domain was all the land retained and managed by a lord of the manor, under the feudal system for his own use, occupation, or support) with 6 freehold and two bond tenants. In 1410 the the Prior had a manor surrounded by pools a great wood called the Park and three groves called Lustely Groves. In 1535 the manor was by now assigned to the Steward of the Priory and the Bailiff  Thomas Huchyn received a fee of 26s. 8d.. After the Dissolution the manor was sold to William Seldon in 1544. He must have disposed of it shortly afterwards to Robert Burdett of Bramcote who died seised of the manor in January 1549. His grandson Robert sold it about 1606 to Thomas Spencer of Claverdon  from whom it passed to his great-nephew, Sir William Spencer of Yarnton, whose son Sir Thomas still held it in 1661. It then seems to have been divided between four daughters. In 1715 Edward Warren and Margaret Rachel Spencer, Cholmeley Turner and Jane (Marwood) George Mordaunt and Elizabeth and John Dormer made a conveyance of the whole manor to Mr Russell of Warwick  formerly a menial servant to the Spencers of Claverdon who left it to his two daughters. These two daughters Jane Russell and Lucy wife of Thomas Pulleine were ladies of the manor in 1727, and they sold it to Horace Mann from whom it descended to Earl Cornwallis and so to his great-grandson Philip Wykeham-Martin, the family of Leeds Castle in Kent. In the Warwickshire Review Order of 1932 our land south of the stream remained in Packwood but north of the stream became part of Solihull