Wherstead Park
In 1784 Sir Robert Harland commissioned Jeffry Wyatville, the architect and garden designer best known for his work at Chatsworth and Winsor Castle, to substantially extend an existing house to form the Wherstead Park mansion. On the site were surviving stable block and large walled garden with a water tower, thought to have been designed at the same time. Five years later Humphry Repton, the renowned garden designer, produced one of his famous Red Books with suggestions for the site’s gardens and medium-sized landscape park. Standing on a hill overlooking the River Orwell and the town of Ipswich, using ‘picturesque’ design principles Repton’s suggestions included taking full advantage of these views from the mansion. How many of Repton’s suggestions were implemented is not known. However, opening-up the view down to the river and the development of at least two woods or coverts within the park, including one surrounding an icehouse, seem likely to have been influenced by his work. By the nineteenth century there were three entrances with lodges. After being requisitioned in both world wars, Eastern Electricity bought the site as its headquarters and added new office buildings beside the original mansion, with much of the estate sold. In 1982 the construction of the A14 leading to the Orwell Bridge cut through the northern parkland leaving just a tiny slice of woodland to the north of the house, which became a car park. By the time the East of England Co-operative Society bought the site in 2008 there remained a small area of garden near the mansion but all the parkland had been sold for agricultural use.
Not open to the general public except for business users
