Search Inventory

Barningham Park

Barningham Park was an estate owned by the Sheldon family before being acquired by the neighbouring Euston Estate in the eighteenth century, when it became a tenanted farm. A new farmhouse was built in the early- to mid-nineteenth century known today as Barningham Park farmhouse. A surviving eighteenth century barn lies close to the house and eighteenth century maps show an avenue of trees from the farmhouse site leading westward across a field and through the ancient woodland of Fakenham Wood, with a later avenue leading northward. Although degraded by the nineteenth century, a few trees survive from these avenues and now form part of field hedge boundaries. Barningham Park is still owned by the Euston Estate, although recently the barn has been in the process of conversion for residential use and the farmhouse for sale with surrounding land on the footprint of its early-nineteenth century gardens.
Not open to the public.

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Bardwell Parish

Tostock Old Rectory

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

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Tostock Parish

Tostock House

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

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Tostock Parish

Redisham Hall

Standing in a landscape park newly-created in the early-nineteenth century, Redisham Hall was built in the 1820s for John Garden Esq. close to the site of the demolished Little Redisham Hall, the sixteenth century manor house for the lost village of Little Redisham that was incorporated into Ringsfield parish during the early-seventeenth century. The site of the lost settlement and fragmentary remains of its church are within the present park, its perimeter incorporating ancient woodland and early-nineteenth century shelterbelts of trees. The park contains a number of mature parkland trees with a late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century avenue and entrance lodge. There is an ornamental bridge over a tributary of the Hundred River leading to the house site, where outbuildings and a partly-walled kitchen garden appear to have eighteenth century elements and are probably related to enclosures associated with the original Elizabethan house. A ha-ha separates the pleasure gardens from the parkland and encloses lawns, herbaceous borders, shrubberies and ponds. A small plant nursery is situated in part of the walled garden.
Plant nursery and gardens open to the public on specific days during the summer

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Ringsfield Parish

Witnesham Hall

A former manor house, sixteenth century Witnesham Hall stands close to the parish church beside the River Fynn, which flows through the site. The house was extensively remodelled c. 1841, possibly with advice from Perry Nursey of Little Bealings, proponent of the picturesque style who may also have advised on the design of the gardens and small parkland surrounding the house. It became a farmhouse in the mid-nineteenth century. Today it is a private residence and includes surviving eighteenth century screening walls, gate piers and a coach house.
Not open to the public

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Witnesham Parish

Assington Hall

Destroyed by fire in 1957, elements of sixteenth century Assingham Hall stands beside the parish church within the remains of an eighteenth century landscape park that once included an avenue of trees with entrance lodges, dammed stream and moated island that may date to the Tudor period. The estate was sold and broken up in 1938. In separate ownership, the northern half of the park is arable, where there is a mature avenue of lime trees and newly-created pond. The southern part has survived much as it was in the mid-nineteenth century, including many mature specimen trees. The moated island has gone, although the nineteenth century pleasure garden layout survives. The stables and coach house have been converted to a residential property, now in separate ownership, with remains of the kitchen garden walls around its garden. A new house has been built within the orchard. To the south of the park a mid-nineteenth century model farm has been converted for residential use.
Not open to the general public. Run as a Christian Centre only for bookings and events

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Assington Parish

Blackheath House

Once part of the Friston Hall Estate, Blackheath House lies on the north bank of the River Alde and is surrounded by woodland, creeks and heath. It was sold in the early-nineteenth century to create the Black Heath Estate. An earlier house on the site was replaced in c. 1887 by an elaborate brick mansion, which was re-fronted in the middle of the twentieth century and later internally gutted by the owners, award-wining architects Michael and Patty Hopkins. Once used as a shooting lodge, the house is set in an oval-shaped plantation with a series of drives created before 1839. On the estate are the surviving remnants of a large duck decoy and decoy lodge dating back to at least the early-eighteenth century and an early-nineteenth century keeper’s cottage nestling in the plantation.
Not open to the public

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Friston Parish

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