Tostock Parish

Tostock Old Rectory was built c. 1800 for the Revd James Oakes rector of Tostock, whose father was the well-known Bury St Edmunds banker and diarist, James Oakes. It was set in a small landscape park with little formal planting around the house but with a large walled garden. This once gave access to an avenue of trees stretching northward through the park, although the avenue has now gone. At end of the nineteenth century it was home to a curate with a strong interest in gardening and horticulture followed by the Revd Julian Tusk, a renowned botanist and naturalist, who is documented as planning and planting a new rose garden that was probably located in the walled garden. In the mid-twentieth century it ceased to be a rectory and became a farmhouse and more recently a private residence. The layout of the grounds has changed little since the mid-nineteenth century, although shelterbelts of trees have become more dense since that time.
Not open to the public

With an earlier core, Tostock House was renovated and extended in the early-nineteenth century to create a substantial farmhouse with impressive farm buildings. By the mid-nineteenth century it was home to the Revd William Tuck, who later became rector of Tostock. He developed a small park from surrounding fields and converted a natural pond into an ornamental feature with an island and boathouse. During the latter part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century part of the parkland was lost to a substantial new property and most of the farm buildings converted for residential purposes.
Not open to the public