Ernulf de Mandeville, the disinherited eldest son of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, had received land in Wiltshire by royal grant as early as 1156, and it is quite possible that he had been given it by the Empress Maud. He was apparently dead by 1178, when the sheriff accounted for £3 9s. 9d. for the farm of his lands for half a year. Ernulf was succeeded by his eldest son Geoffrey. In 1201 and in 1210–12 a Geoffrey de Mandeville, probably this son, was holding land in BRATTON. Either this Geoffrey, or his son of the same name, borrowed money from Jews, and the property of the de Mandevilles in Highworth and Bratton was seized for payment of the debt. In 1232 the justices dealing with matters relating to the Jews were ordered to make reasonable terms for Geoffrey de Mandeville for debts owed by him to three Jews. Part of the profits from the two manors was to be assigned every yeare for payment of the debts, and the rest was to provide for the maintenance of Geoffrey, his wife and children. In 1236 Geoffrey de Mandeville held one fee in Bratton and Highworth. In 1242–3 he held ? knight's fee in Bratton by castle-guard service to Devizes Castle. Geoffrey de Mandeville, grandson of Ernulf, died in 1246 and was succeeded by his son Ralph. Ralph died in 1280 holding 20 librates of land in Bratton and Highworth of the king in chief. For this he paid £1 a yeare to Devizes Castle in time of peace, and in time of war owed 40 days service there for himself and a horseman. Thomas, son and heir of Ralph, apparently died soon after his father, for in 1288–9 Amice, widow of Ralph de Mandeville, and wife of Robert de Saucey, was holding part of the estate in dower, of the heritage of Robert de Mandeville. Robert may have been a younger brother of Thomas. He appears to have been succeeded by another Ralph de Mandeville, for in 1299 William de Mandeville was holding the inheritance of Ralph his father in Bratton. William died in 1333, when the estate passed to his brother John. John died c. 1336, and Bratton was settled on his widow Benedicta. In 1361 she conveyed her interest in it to the house of Bonhommes at Edington. This grant was confirmed in 1362 by Nicholas atte Hoke and Joan his wife, kinswoman and heir of John de Mandeville, and in 1372 by Walter Maryner de Langecote and Isabel his wife, possibly another heir of John de Mandeville.
A number of lesser estates in Bratton were also acquired by the Bonhommes soon after the foundation of the house in 1358. In 1401 the property belonging to the community in Bratton and Dilton was described as ½ knight's fee in Bratton late belonging to Walter Dauntsey. Bratton continued to form part of the Edington lands until the Dissolution.
In 1543 Bratton was granted to Sir Thomas Seymour of Sudeley Castle (Glos.), brother of the Protector, who had already acquired the bulk of the Edington property. After Seymour's execution in 1548–9, Bratton appears to have remained with the Crown until 1591 when it was granted by the queen to Richard Knollis and Richard Swale. In the same yeare these grantees sold it to Sir Christopher Hatton, the Lord Chancellor. Sir Christopher died seised of it in 1591, leaving as his heir Sir William Newport, son of his sister Dorothy, who had married Sir John Newport. Sir William assumed the name Hatton and in 1595 he and his wife Elizabeth conveyed the manor with four watermills to Richard Beconsawe and Francis Shrimpton. Four years later in 1599 it passed from Gerard Fleetwood and Jane his wife to William Lambert. Shortly after this it passed to William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester (d. 1628/9), who already held the Bratton Grange or Farm estate, and in 1620 Paulet sold it to Sir James Ley (cr. Earl of Marlborough 1626), in whose possession it was at the time of his death in 1629. The manor then presumably descended for a time with the capital manor of Westbury but shortly after the death of James Ley, 3rd Earl of Marlborough, in 1665, it apparently passed to William Bromwich, owner of the grange and farm, for he was admitting tenants on the manor in 1667. In 1669 Arthur Bromwich sold the manor to Sir James Thynne, from whom it eventually descended to the Marquesses of Bath. Shortly before the Second World War Lord Bath sold his estate in Bratton.
Members of the Whitaker family, who leased most of the Bratton Grange estate, were also leasing lands in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries on this manor.
The 'mansion' house of Bratton is described in a 17th-century survey as a good, tiled house consisting of kitchen, hall, 2 parlours, a pantry, a cellar, brewhouse, and other offices. There was also a tiled barn, stables, outhouses, gardens, orchards, and a homeclose comprising in all about 4 a. It is not possible to identify this house with any in Bratton now. Grange Farm, in Lower Road, the farmhouse of Lord Bath's former estate in Bratton, dates from 1739 and later.
After the execution of Sir Thomas Seymour, lord of the manor of Bratton, an estate known as BRATTON GRANGE, or FARM, was conveyed in 1550 to Sir William Paulet (cr. Marquess of Winchester 1551, d. 1571). This estate comprised some 346 a. of arable and 62 a. of meadow or pasture with lands called Little Broadmead, Broadmead, Opencrofts, and Great Opencrofts, and lay in the south of the parish. It passed with the Winchester title until 1600 when William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester (d. 1628/9), mortgaged the estate for 1,000 years to mortgagees, who sold the lease to Thomas Hutchins and William Bower. After the death of Hutchins in 1607 the reversion was granted by the marquess to Sefton Bromwich, who probably redeemed the mortgage.Sefton Bromwich died a few months later and was succeeded by his son William, a minor, to whom livery was made in 1629. William Bromwich, Rachel, his wife, and Arthur Bromwich sold the Grange to Sir Walter Ernley of Etchilhampton. In 1695 it was settled upon Anne, widow of Edward Ernley, son of Sir Walter Ernley, with remainder to her second son Sir Edward Ernley. Elizabeth, the only daughter and heir of Sir Edward Ernley, married Henry Drax in 1720 and died in 1759. She was succeeded by her eldest son Thomas Erle Drax, on whose death in 1789 the property passed to his brother Edward. Sarah Frances Drax, daughter and heir of Edward, married Richard Grosvenor, who assumed the name of Erle Drax. Richard Erle Drax Grosvenor died in 1819 and his widow in 1822. In 1829 the whole estate was sold in lots. The manor house and a part of the estate were bought by George Watson-Taylor of Erlestoke Park. This still belonged to Watson-Taylor in 1842, but before the end of the 19th century it had passed to Charles Nicholas Paul Phipps.
In 1815 part of the estate, comprising nearly 1,000 a., and including Lower and Upper Garston, and Garston Orchard was leased by Richard Erle Drax Grosvenor to Philip Whitaker. In 1842 the same Philip Whitaker occupied the manor house and another part of the estate was leased to his son, Joshua Whitaker. Members of the Whitaker family continued to farm the estate until well on into the 20th century. When John Saffery Whitaker retired in 1913 Grant's Farm, lying on Salisbury Plain, and the largest farm on the estate, had been farmed by the Whitaker family for some two hundred years.
The manor house of this estate, and still called the Manor House in 1960, stands at the corner of Court Lane and the high road to Westbury. It is partly of the late 17th century and has stone mullioned windows with drip moulds and a stone slated roof.
In the Middle Ages this manor was usually called GODSWELL. Later it became known as GODSWELL AND CHAPMANSLADE and eventually as Chapmanslade only. The name Godswell survives in Godswell Grove Farm, a small 19th-century farmhouse, about ¾ mile north-east of Chapmanslade village. During the 12th and early 13th centuries Stanley Abbey received a number of grants of land in Godswell and Chapmanslade: land at Godswell was granted by Hugh Plucknet, one of the abbey's earliest benefactors; Walter of Brookway and Peter of Scudamore also granted lands in the same place; among the gifts of Hugh of Raden was pasture for 400 sheep at Godswell; Philip Marmium granted land there formerly held by Edric, and some land once belonging to Bartholomew his father, lying between 'bellus quercus' and the Brookway; Thomas de Lanvaley granted 2 a. of land in Chapmanslade and some land once held by Alfric Ches; a holding in Chapmanslade belonging to the Prioress of Studley (Oxon.) was at an unknown date conveyed to Stanley.
In 1242–3 the estate belonging to Stanley in Godswell comprised a carucate held in free alms. Licence was granted in 1324 for the manor to be leased for 20 years. It remained among the possessions of Stanley Abbey until that house was dissolved in 1536, by which time the manor of Godswell seems to have been annexed to Heywood, another Stanley Abbey estate.
After the Dissolution the manor, then described as Godswell near Chapmanslade, alias Godswell and Chapmanslade, was granted with Heywood and most of the rest of the Stanley Abbey property to Sir Edward Baynton, of Bromham. Sir Edward died in 1545 and the following yeare his son, Andrew, conveyed the manor to his brother, Edward. In 1561 Edward Baynton conveyed it to Thomas Long. Thomas Long died in 1562 and his heirs were his nieces Martha, wife of William Meredith, and Magdalen, wife of Roger Sadler, daughters of his brother Robert Long, and his great-nephew Henry, son of Henry Viner and Mary, a third daughter of Robert Long. William and Martha Meredith sold their ? of the manor in c. 1578 to Lionel Duckett, and in 1579 John, son of Roger and Magdalen Sadler, conveyed his ? to Lionel Duckett's nephew Stephen. Henry Viner, however, appears to have acquired these ? from the Ducketts, for on his death in 1626 he was seised of the manor of Chapmanslade and Godswell. Richard Viner, Henry's son and heir, died childless in 1649, and his heirs were the daughters of his sister Mary, Mary, wife of John Minshull, and Anne, wife of the Revd. Oliver Chivers. Mary Minshull died without issue and her share in the manor passed to the daughters of her sister, Anne Chivers, Susan, wife of John Lewis, and Mary, wife of Thomas Bythesea. By a partition of 1667 the manor of Chapmanslade was assigned to Susan, who apparently married secondly George Morgan, while Mary Bythesea received Wyke House, Trowbridge. Susan died childless, and the manor passed to her nephew John, son of Thomas and Mary Bythesea. John Bythesea was succeeded in 1747 by his son, another John. This John died in 1782 and Chapmanslade passed to his third son, William. In c. 1801 the manor was sold either by William Bythesea or his son George, to Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, and it then descended in the family of the Marquess of Bath until sold by Lord Bath just after the Second World War.