BRANCHES PARK MANSION STOOD A MILE WEST OF THE CHURCH OF ST MARGARET OF ANTIOCH IN COWLINGE in the west of the county. Its estate lay in both the parishes of Cowlinge and Little Bradley. The original manor house of Cowlinge, a manor in which the Drury family of Rougham, east of Bury St Edmunds, had an interest, stood on a different site from the later Georgian house. The lordship passed through various families until, on the death in 1709 of Sir Stephen Soame, whose father had been Lord Mayor of London, it was sold to Francis Dickins, a bencher of the Middle Temple. At the time he made his will Dickins lived in Hampshire, but there is a memorial to him in Cowlinge Church where in 1733 he rebuilt the tower and provided two bells.

Dickins had been assembling land holdings in Cowlinge and Lidgate since 1705 when he purchased Hardhouse Field, an acquisition which was followed by others until his death in 1747. Around 1730 he built a new house on the estate he had assembled. He was succeeded by his nephew, Ambrose, who employed Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to landscape the 190-acre park. On Ambrose's death the property passed to Francis and Diana Dickins of Wollaston, Northamptonshire who sold the mansion house and the bulk of the estate in 1806/7 to John Kemp, a maltster from Sible Hedingham in Essex, for £28,000. It is clear that Kemp financed his acquisition of the estate by mortgaging it, and his ownership ended with his bankruptcy and the sale of the property by his assignees in 1817. By this time the estate consisted of 942 acres together with the great and small tithes extending over 3,000 acres. Kemp had also acquired from Dickins the lease of the rectory of Cowlinge owned by Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

The estate was acquired by Henry Usborne of Manchester Square, London, being financed through his marriage settlement. He was High Sheriff of Suffolk in 1823 and died in 1840. In that year the estate extended to 1,602 acres and was valued at £63,920. Following Usborne’s death the estate was put up for sale but it remained unsold. In 1844 the house alone was let for three years to the rector of nearby Depden.