Hengrave Hall
Hengrave Hall was a moated manor house close to the parish church with a small deer park. A large new mansion and garden were completed c. 1538 slightly north of the original house. The moat was reduced to three sides and an avenue on the central axis of the house ran south-eastward towards a viewing mount. There was a walled kitchen garden, the remains survive, eastern entrance and a warrener, dovecote and formal Dutch-style gardens. Queen Elizabeth I stayed at Hengrave in 1578. Soon after, the park was enlarged and ponds developed north of the house. By the first half of the eighteenth century there was a bowling green and ornate gated entrance courtyard. The mansion was reduced in size by 1755 and new avenues developed to the south and north. The landscape designer, Richard Woods, proposed sweeping away the formal features of the park and gardens, but were not implemented. Lost previously, the south-east avenue was reinstated during the nineteenth century and the surviving park was encircled by a belt of trees. There was a new southern drive with lodge, a more landscape park feel and less formal gardens. At the end of the century the geometric garden layout returned with a surviving garden room and wrought iron gates into the western parkland. Recently the southern drive disappeared and the south-east avenue now acts as a grand entrance drive with distant views of the house. Formal and informal layouts are used for today’s gardens.
Only open to the public for booked events
