Publisher's Synopsis
There is no more picturesque spot in England than Bradgate Old Manor, the birthplace of Lady Jane Grey. It stands in a sequestered corner, about three miles from the town of Leicester, amid arid slate hillocks, which slope down to the fertile valleys at their feet. In Leland's Perambulations through England, a survey of the kingdom undertaken by command of Henry VIII, Bradgate is described as possessing "a fair parke and a lodge lately built there by the Lorde Thomas Grey, Marquise of Dorsete, father of Henry, that is now Marquise. There is a faire and plentiful spring of water brought by Master Brok as a man would judge agyne the hills through the lodge and thereby it driveth a mylle." He also informs us that "there remain few tokens of the old castelle," which leads us to believe that at the time of Lady Jane Grey's birth Bradgate was a comparatively new house.
