Brambletye

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, out here in Kimble County, the Hill Country has a way of surprisin' you, and Brambletye is about as good a surprise as this land has to offer. The story starts across an ocean.

A man named William Hall, born in 1833, made his way over from England to Texas in 1888. He wasn't a young man by then; he had some years on him, but he had a vision, and somewhere up on a hill overlooking Bear Creek, he found his place to plant it. Between 1895 and 1900, Hall built Brambletye.

And when I say built, I mean built. Those walls aren't thrown together with whatever was handy. They're hand-cut stone, two feet thick.

Two feet. The ceiling beams overhead are hand-hewn walnut and other hardwoods. Every bit of it shaped by hand, by someone who knew exactly what he was after.

You don't build like that unless you're building something meant to outlast you. And here's where the story turns quiet. William Hall died in 1900; the very year the house was finished, or thereabouts.

He barely had time to set down in the thing he'd spent years raising from the earth. The stone house and the ranchland surrounding it passed on through the hands of several early ranch families after that. Brambletye stands today as a rare example of late nineteenth-century English vernacular architecture in the Texas Hill Country.

That creek below it was called Viejo Creek before it became Bear Creek. The hill it sits on commands a view that hasn't changed much in the telling. An Englishman came to the Hill Country late in life, cut stone two feet thick, hewn walnut overhead, and built something that is still standing more than a hundred years after he was gone.

That's not a small thing. That's a man who knew, somehow, that the work was the point; even if he wouldn't be around long to enjoy it.

What the marker says

Brambletye was built between 1895 and 1900 by English immigrant William Hall (b. 1833), who came to Texas in 1888. After Hall's death in 1900, the stone house and surrounding ranchland were owned by several early ranch families. Prominently sited on a hill overlooking Bear Creek, known earlier as Viejo Creek, Brambletye is a rare example of late 19th-century English vernacular architecture in the Texas Hill Country. It features hand cut stone walls two feet thick and ceiling beams of hand-hewn walnut and other hardwoods. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983