Polstead Hall
Polstead Hall and the nearby parish church lie in a former medieval deer park that was disparked during World War II. With earlier origins, the house was rebuilt in the late-eighteenth century and altered in the early-nineteenth century. A number of veteran trees survived into the 1970s, including the ‘Gospel Oak’, once said to be the oldest oak in Suffolk but now only a dead trunk. During the nineteenth century there were L-shaped pleasure gardens, part at a lower level than the parkland beyond to form a secluded hollow. There are the remains of a stable yard, separated from the gardens by a surviving wall and sheds, once with a central glasshouse accessed from both gardens and stable yard that has since been lost. Today much of the parkland has been turned to arable and the house has lost its southern wing and part of the garden, now a park-like lawn. The lower-level garden has a swimming pool enclosure and area of formal planting to a geometric plan. Isolated from the Hall, a surviving lodge stands at what was once the southern entrance.
Not open to the public
