The ancient Saxon farming village of Bramcote (whose name means "cottages in the broom") sits high on a wooded sandstone ridge. A brief mention in the Domesday Book of 1086 tells that these lands were given over to William I’s porter, William Ostirus, presumably as reward for carrying the King's bags during the conquest of England. The oldest surviving building in the village is the so-called sunken church on Town Street, all that remains of which is the square tower with its 4-foot-thick, 14th-century buttressed walls and belfry lights windows. The chancel and nave were torn down after the consecration of a new church in 1861 when the parish had outgrown the confines of the building.
During much of the Middle Ages, the land around here was owned by Sempringham priory in nearby Lincolnshire. After the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s the land was bought by the Hanley family, who built the original Manor House here in 1564, renovated in the early 17th-century current building off of Town Street is a fine example of the English brick buildings of the time. In 1650, the Manor and its lands passed to the Sherwin family, under whom the village prospered, mainly thanks to Notts. clergyman William Lee, who, in 1589, invented a knitting machine for making stockings, turning the village into a centre for domestic industry. By 1844, the village was home to 33 of these stocking frames, housed in specially constructed three-storey cottages with extra large windows on the third floor. The last surviving examples of these buildings in the village are at 139/143 Broomhill Terrace.
The Sherwins also provided money for two schools, the church of St Michael and All Angels, and the quaint Alms Houses at the top of Cow Lane, that were homes for four poor women of the parish. The Sherwin Arms pub, on Derby Road, that housed the village post office was named after them. This pub and the White Lion on Town Street were both licensed in 1844 and still serve to this day. Bramcote’s picturesque location attracted a number of other wealthy residents, and is home to some expensive 19th century residences. The Grove, now St John’s Theological College, the Grange home to the Enfield family until 1946 when it became the research centre for the British Sugar Corporation who cultivated the fields with sugar beet in a courageously doomed endeavour, and Bramcote Hall, damaged by fire and demolished in 1964.
The area still attracts the shire’s wealthy with a row of expensive houses along Bramcote hills providing homes for football manager Brian Clough and Olympic skaters Torvill and Dean amongst others. Although it has been swallowed up by its larger neighbor and is now viewed as just another Nottingham suburb with its row upon row of Hoften & Sons built semis, the village can throw up some surprises for those that dig deeper, including nine listed buildings and a small woodland of local wildlife interest.