Search Inventory

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

Aldham Hall

In an isolated position next to the Church of St Mary, Aldham Hall was once the manor house for Aldham and believed to be the site of a lost medieval village. Behind a Georgian render, the Hall conceals a fifteenth century timber-framed house and a pond to the north may be the remains of its moat. A tributary of the River Brett flows to the south of the house, which was dammed by the middle of the nineteenth century to form an ornamental lake with island. As it has been for many centuries, Aldham Hall continues to be a farmhouse.
Not open to the public.

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Aldham Parish

Hawstead Place

Once in a sixteenth century deer park, the moated mansion of Hawstead Place was the home of the powerful Drury family who erected a huge statue of Hercules in honour of Elizabeth I when they entertained her in 1578. In 1656 Hawstead Place and nearby Hardwick House were sold to the Cullums, noted horticulturalists, and botanists, whose passion for plants was reflected in the gardens at Hawstead and Hardwick. Friend of the garden designer John Evelyn, Sir Dudley Cullum developed fashionable late-seventeenth/early-eighteenth century formal gardens around the mansion and moat including a surviving raised viewing terrace and likely water gardens nearby, some of the ponds survive. The site became a tenanted farm when the Cullums made their home at Hardwick in the early-eighteenth century and much of the deer park was converted for agricultural purposes. The mansion was finally demolished in 1827, the Cullums eventually selling Hawstead Place in the 1920s. Today the moat survives in a degraded condition, with the ghost of other surrounding features reflected in earthworks. Small areas of parkland now surround a farm complex and nearby there are two walled enclosures believed to be sixteenth century, plus other historic farmstead buildings such as a barn dating back to 1423.
Not open to the public except for booked events and holiday accommodation

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Hawstead Parish

Westwood Hall

Once the site of a large house built in the mid-seventeenth century, all that remains of the original Westwood Hall are a cross-passage, service cell and carved oak pediment over the present house with an inscription to its builder Barnaby Gibson (1625–1706). On the site are the remains of two early-eighteenth century parallel garden canals associated with the house and built by either Barnaby’s son or grandson, both named Barnaby. The Barnabys had family ties to the Sheppard family of Campsey Ashe and Edward Mann of Boundary Farm in Framsden, where similar canals exist. Today, a house in separate ownership exists to the south of the site that has taken the name Westwood Hall and the remains of the original Hall have been enlarged and described in Historic England’s listing as a farmhouse.
Not open to the public

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Stonham Parva Parish