WHEN William Dodington, auditor of the Tower Mint, leapt to his death from the top of St Sepulchre's church tower in London one cold day in January 1600, it sent shockwaves round the city.

One corner of rural Hampshire also reacted with alarm, for it was William Dodington who built and owned Breamore House and much of the village surrounding it.

"He'd got into an argument with another landowner and there had been fisticuffs and fights," recounts local historian Gerald Ponting, who has collaborated on a book called Breamore Yesterday and Today with Alderholt author Anthony Light.

"When he jumped off the church tower, it caused a sensation in London."

Dodington's suicide note laid the blame squarely at the neighbouring landowner's door.

"John Bulkeley and his fellows by perjury," he wrote, "have brought me to this.

"Surely after they had thus slandered me, everyday that I lived was to me an hundred deaths, which caused me to choose to die with Infamy, than to live with Infamy and Torment."

The Dodington family's misery did not end there.

William's estate passed to his son, also called William, who was knighted by King James I on his Coronation Day in 1603, but the next generation went to the bad when Sir William's son, Henry, murdered his mother.

He took a ticking-off about his disorderly behaviour rather badly, according to one account and "drew his sword and ran her twice through, and afterwards, she being dead, gave her many wounds".

He was hanged for the deed "in sight of the house where he was untimely born" - possibly Gallows Hill on the downs above Breamore.

Sir William himself was understandably unhappy by the turn of events. "Sir William was depressed by his father's suicide, wife's murder and son's execution," Gerald says, "and he tried to atone for what he saw as the result of building on what was once monastic land."

He spent money on the church and undertook many public duties, becoming a JP and Sheriff of Hampshire, but to no avail.

None of Sir William's other sons survived their father and the line died out when his granddaughter, Anne, married.

Fifty years later, in 1748, the house and estate were purchased by Sir William Hulse and have remained with the family ever since.

Sir William Hulse passed the estate to his eldest son, another Sir Edward, and, in 1760, he and his family moved in and have stayed ever since - with the exception of the war years, when the house was requisitioned by the American allied forces and General George Patton planned the D-Day landings in the Great Hall.

Current owner, also Sir Edward, remembers Patton as "larger than life".

"I was living with my mother and we would come over here - it was immensely impressive to a small boy.

"Patton was totally different from Montgomery, who was at Longford Castle and was totally serious.

"Patton used to throw large parties - we were quite frankly spoilt and that was great."

Furniture and art treasures were moved out during the military occupation, but no one touched the portrait of Christian Dodington - legend has it that anyone moving it risks sudden death.

And knowing the luck of the Dodingtons, no one, it seems, was prepared to risk it.

Sir Edward Hulse confirms the story.

"When we bought the property, that was the one condition - that the portrait remained in it and was not touched.

"The story is that whoever touches it will die the same die.

"I know two people who did touch it and, as it happened, one of them did die that day.

"Basically, I'm not tremendously into spooks, but I don't tempt fate - I've never touched it and I never will."