Finborough Hall
Now an independent school, late-eighteenth century Finborough Hall replaced a previous house overlooking an extensive wooded landscape park with post-medieval origins. A hospital during World War I, later the headquarters of Eastern Electricity, in the 1960s the parkland was sold for a golf course and the house and gardens become a school in the 1970s. Probably of eighteenth century date, an ornamental lake and folly mound topped by a column survive. Many original drives have become footpaths across the golf course. Three entrance lodges survive, two as private houses, with the remains of ornamental metal gates and brick piers still marking one of the old entrances. The third dates to the late-nineteenth century and is the main entrance to the school where the drive and adjacent early ha-ha curve around the pleasure gardens towards the north front of the house. Some evidence remains of features from a nineteenth century garden that included an ‘embowered walk’ leading to a shrubbery with paths and ornamental arch to an oval pond. The mid-eighteenth century coach house and stables are now residential properties. Probably of a similar date, a large irregularly-shaped walled garden now has twentieth century houses within its walls that were breached for entrances and a road, although many walls were preserved and restored to survive today.
Not open to the general public
