Search Inventory

Red House Park

On high ground overlooking the town of Ipswich, Red House Park appears to have been created to surround the original mid-seventeenth century Red House mansion. By the eighteenth century the park had been landscaped to include shelterbelts, a double avenue of trees on the central axis of the house and ornamental water feature or canal. A walled garden and plantings of trees and shrubs were to the rear of the house with a terraced lawn fenced off from parkland beyond to the front and freestanding glasshouse, probably an orangery, in the western pleasure gardens. Alterations were made to the house, probably during the early-nineteenth century, which also included the addition of an ornamented entrance courtyard to the front. By the early-twentieth century the house was derelict and The Red House Estate was broken up and sold in lots. The northern parkland was taken into arable cultivation, with most of the southern parkland sold for housing and the mansion demolished in 1937, shortly followed by the construction of the Ipswich northern relief road. A short section of the route of the original avenue was preserved, although replanted.
Section of avenue route is open to the public as a ‘pocket park’

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Ipswich

Little Haugh Hall

Once the manor house for the sub-manor of Little Haugh, in the late-seventeenth century Little Haugh Hall had a moated garden, walled enclosure, dovecote and raised walk beside and a surviving seventeenth century bridge over the Black Bourne river that are depicted in a c. 1719 Peter Tillemans painting. The house and grounds were substantially altered in the early-eighteenth century for Cox Macro to create a surviving Georgian house surrounded by parkland and pleasure gardens including groves, vistas of clipped evergreen hedges and classically-styled garden structures. Probably from the same period there is a surviving viewing mount giving views over the parkland and towards the house. The nineteenth century saw the widening of the river to create a thin lake, alterations to an earlier enclosed kitchen garden with tree-lined walk leading to a wood and the addition of a ha-ha separating the terraced gardens from the parkland. Today, the site includes relic gardens that have been substantially altered, a number of mature trees supplemented by newer plantings and the moat partially in-filled.
Not open to the public

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Norton Parish

Melton Hall

Built at the end of the eighteenth century, Melton Hall is near the site of an earlier manor house that is believed to have been built by Richard Wood, son of the Earl of Halifax. It lies close to the market town of Woodbridge beside the historic main road between London and Yarmouth. The Wood family went on to have a successful solicitor’s practice into the twentieth century. The house stands in a small area of pleasure gardens dotted with nineteenth century trees and the site includes a late-eighteenth or early-nineteenth century walled garden with crinkle-crankle dividing walls, lawns with wildlife meadows and woods managed in collaboration with Suffolk Wildlife Trust.
Not open to the public

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Melton Parish

Blundeston Lodge

Previously known as Sydnors, Blundeston Villa and Blundeston House, eighteenth century Blundeston Lodge sat in a small landscape park substantially developed in the eighteenth century by the Revd Norton Nicholls, a friend of the landscape designer Humphry Repton and the poet Thomas Gray. Using picturesque principles, the wider landscaping included an ice-house, ha-ha, pleached arbour and summerhouses. Shelterbelts surrounded the parkland which was scattered with freestanding trees as it gently sloped down to Blundeston Decoy lake. Beside the lake were boathouses and a summerhouse known as ‘Gray’s Seat’. Near the house there was a square walled garden and a later mid-nineteenth century glasshouse/conservatory and fernery designed and built by James Pulham and Son, who created and specialised in the use of pulhamite, an artificial stone. The house was demolished c. 1960 to make way for a prison, which closed c. 2013 to be replaced by a new housing development and all trace of the historic landscaping has been lost except the surviving lake.
Not open to the public

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Blundeston Parish

Beyton House

Once the site of the moated house, a new eighteenth or early-nineteenth century house was built slightly further east leaving two arms, later just one, of the moat as ornamental canal features with a partly-walled kitchen garden on the old house site. The house and its formal gardens sat in a small park and historic field names suggest evidence for an earlier designed landscape. Beyton House later became a farmhouse and during the nineteenth century it was tenanted when the base for farm activities moved to Beyton Lodge, a property slightly to the north. On the break-up of the estate at the beginning of the twentieth century, the house once more became a farmhouse that was rebuilt after a fire. Much of the earlier parkland, a canal and partly-walled garden, now laid to grass, have survived and twentieth century owners renovated and extended its pleasure gardens.
Not open to the public

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Beyton Parish

Barking Hall

Next to the parish church, the early-eighteenth century Barking Hall replaced an earlier manor house on the site but was itself demolished in the twentieth century, when its stables were converted and expanded to create a care home. There was once a small medieval deer park nearby that appears to have later expanded with the addition of surviving nearby ancient woodlands, although now disparked. The Barking Hall estate is documented to have had a complex of avenues centred on the mansion that were likely to date to the late-seventeenth century. The site now includes a surviving uncultivated walled garden, probably contemporary with the eighteenth century mansion, although no gardens from the Hall survive.
Not open to the general public

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Barking Parish

Coney Weston Hall

On the site of an earlier house, in the early-nineteenth century alterations created the present country house of Coney Weston Hall. At a similar time the road beside the house was diverted to give more privacy and place the house in a more central position within its small park, which was enlarged at the end of the century. An earlier semi-enclosed garden north of the house was fully enclosed during the nineteenth century with the addition of crinkle-crankle walls. More recently the park has contracted and its pleasure gardens mostly gone, although the walled garden, shelterbelts of trees, a serpentine lake and parkland trees have survived from the nineteenth century.
Not open to the public

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Coney Weston Parish

The Lodge

A classically-styled house built in the early-nineteenth century, The Lodge’s modest grounds developed and expanded during the middle part of the century creating a house surrounded by park-like gardens dotted with freestanding trees which, except for the addition of more trees to supplement original surviving specimens, has changed little since the beginning of the twentieth century. A surviving nineteenth century single-storey cottage-orné style lodge lies at the south-east entrance.
Not open to the public

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Great Bealings Parish

Great Bealings Hall

The site of the demolished manor house of Great Bealings Hall lies next to the parish church. It became a farmhouse during the eighteenth century and was demolished soon after 1783. Surviving terrace earthworks around the site appear to relate to courtyards and possibly ornamental canals shown on an undated map c. 1700. By 1839 a house on the opposite side of the road had taken the name ‘Great Bealings Hall’, but which is today known as Bealings Hall.
Most of the site not open to the public

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Great Bealings Parish

Bealings House

Remote from the main village settlement areas, late-eighteenth century Bealings House sits in a small park that was enhanced and developed in the early-nineteenth century. The house is in an elevated position facing south with views towards the River Lark, enhanced by an earthwork terrace. Once with an in-and-out drive, today the house is served by one drive, although the ornamental entrance gates survive at the unused entrance. An early-nineteenth century pyramidal garden folly featuring Indian deities stands south-east of the house. A number of mature nineteenth century trees still stand in parkland that has changed little in the last two centuries.
Not open to the public

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Great Bealings Parish