Blundeston Lodge
Previously known as Sydnors, Blundeston Villa and Blundeston House, eighteenth century Blundeston Lodge sat in a small landscape park substantially developed in the eighteenth century by the Revd Norton Nicholls, a friend of the landscape designer Humphry Repton and the poet Thomas Gray. Using picturesque principles, the wider landscaping included an ice-house, ha-ha, pleached arbour and summerhouses. Shelterbelts surrounded the parkland which was scattered with freestanding trees as it gently sloped down to Blundeston Decoy lake. Beside the lake were boathouses and a summerhouse known as ‘Gray’s Seat’. Near the house there was a square walled garden and a later mid-nineteenth century glasshouse/conservatory and fernery designed and built by James Pulham and Son, who created and specialised in the use of pulhamite, an artificial stone. The house was demolished c. 1960 to make way for a prison, which closed c. 2013 to be replaced by a new housing development and all trace of the historic landscaping has been lost except the surviving lake.
Not open to the public
