Search Inventory

Woolverstone House

Woolverstone House is an Arts and Crafts house completed in 1901 and sunken garden to designs by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the gardens possibly inspired by the work of Gertrude Jekyll. Built on land on the edge of Woolverstone Park and owned by Charles Hugh Berners, it was originally used as a rest home for nuns and orphan girls, served as a Red Cross hospital during World War I, became accommodation for Woolverstone Hall School and then a private residence in the 1980s. Attached to either side of the house are tall walls with arched gateways. The gardens comprise a series of compartments or rooms and include a sunken garden, lawns, formal hedges, herbaceous borders and numerous species of trees.
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Woolverstone Parish

Wells Hall

Originally the site of the moated manor house for Milden, Wells Hall had become a farmhouse by the eighteenth century with a smaller house replacing the earlier and grander Hall. The site straddles the parish boundary of Brent Eleigh and Milden. Most of the surviving moat and the Hall are in Milden with a sixteenth century brick boundary wall and gateway in Brent Eleigh. The site also includes a dry fishpond and large barn that probably dates back to the earlier Hall, both in Milden parish. Wells Hall is now a private residence.
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Brent Eleigh Parish Milden Parish

Bosmere Hall

First built in the second half of the eighteenth century on the north side of the River Gipping valley, Bosmere Hall was surrounded by a small park including the ancient Bosmere lake, known for its abundant fish where two boathouses once lay on its shore. The house sat in an oval garden enclosure with stables and enclosures to the north, one of which had glasshouses during the nineteenth century. A further glasshouse, probably an orangery, had views across the parkland and down to the river. A small lodge, probably dated to the early-nineteenth century, survives at the entrance along the park’s boundary. The house has been substantially altered since it was first built but the parkland, lake and garden enclosure around the house survive today very much as they were in the nineteenth century, although the glasshouses have been lost and the stables and enclosures have been converted for office use.
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Creeting St Mary Parish

Spexhall Manor

Thought to have been the site of a manor house but becoming a farmhouse, Spexhall Manor has a sixteenth or seventeenth century core that was extensively restored and enlarged by the architect Walter Sarel in the Arts and Crafts style c. 1908 to create a sizable country house. Having worked with and been influenced by Gertrude Jekyll, he is likely to have also designed the gardens that developed at the time using Italianate features such as terraces, buildings and bridges. A run of crinkle-crankle walling of unknown date shields these gardens from the drive and appears to be post-1928. During the twentieth and early twenty-first century a small park developed around the house.
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Spexhall Parish

Kedington Hall

Once the moated site of an ancient manor house owned by the Barnardiston family who entertained Elizabeth I in 1578, Kedington Hall stood next to the parish church and was remodelled in the early-seventeenth century but demolished c. 1785. Its dry moat survived into the late-twentieth century but was filled to become part of an arable field. The walls of its kitchen garden mostly survive, although it is now the site of a churchyard extension and two residential gardens. The route of an ancient entrance avenue leading to the Hall from the village survives, although replanted, and is now part of the Stour Valley Path.
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Kedington Parish

Chediston Hall

Now the site of a twentieth century farmhouse at the heart of a farming estate, the original Tudor Chediston Hall was the subject of major rebuilding phases in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and stood in a small landscape park, which could have had its origins in either century. Characteristic of an eighteenth century ornamental garden feature, a rectangular canal stood north of the house until it was infilled in the twentieth century. Some walls survive from a walled kitchen garden near the house as does a ha-ha marking the northern edge of the gardens, both likely to be contemporary with the park’s creation. Another ha-ha south of the house also survives, although the parkland has been given over to arable.
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Chediston Parish

Gipping Hall

The Gipping Hall Estate was owned by the Tyrell family from at least the fifteenth century until Gipping Hall was demolished c. 1860. The site lies at the end of a long, narrow green that would once have acted as a wide, formal entrance drive culminating in a view of their surviving high-status and elaborate private chapel built c. 1483 that stood close to the mansion. Opposite the chapel is Chapel Farm, once the home farm for the estate, and beyond to the west is a surviving early-eighteenth century octagonal dovecote. By 1846 the surrounding park had reduced in size from when it was the Tyrell family’s main residence. Two walled kitchen gardens were situated north of the mansion but slowly deteriorated after its demolition, leaving only humps and bumps in a field turned over to grazing to act as a ghost of their existence.
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Gipping Parish

Sternfield House

Formerly the rectory, Sternfield House was built in the second half of the eighteenth century beside Sternfield’s parish church, probably for the Revd Montague North who was rector between 1767 and 1779. It had a small park of woods and pastureland and an in-and-out drive. Pleasure gardens lay mainly to the south of the house with a small walled garden beside the churchyard accessed by staff through a walkway hidden from view of the house and gardens by a high brick wall. Attached to this wall is a surviving nineteenth century hexagonal summerhouse. Unclear if executed, plans for the gardens for the Revd North included an ornamental garden canal bordering the walled garden. However, by 1838 this was absent from the site. Little change took place to the grounds and house until it ceased to be the rectory and became a private residence in 1938. In the 1960s Sir Eric and Lady Prue Penn made alterations to the house and developed the grounds so they were fit for royal visitors, including the Queen. Today the walled garden, staff corridor and basic park and basic garden layout remain much as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century, although the parkland is now more wooded and the southern gardens developed and formally planted.
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Sternfield Parish

Denston Hall

Once the site of a moated Tudor mansion, Denston Hall is a late-seventeenth/early eighteenth century house set in a park dating back to at least the eighteenth century. One wing of the Tudor mansion and arm of the moat survive at the rear of the Hall. Probably a replanting of an earlier avenue, trees line the entrance drive today. South of the Hall is a lozenge-shaped walled garden with three surrounding canals thought to be early-eighteenth century. On the site there is a sixteenth century barn and attached dovecote and also decorative park gates. The park has changed little since the nineteenth century, although additional planting and replanting of shelterbelts and woods has taken place and a large lake was created east of the Hall in the early-twenty-first century. The walled garden and surrounding pleasure gardens continue to be well cared for and in the early-twenty-first century parts were partly-redesigned by Mark Rumary and later Xa Tollemache.
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Denston Parish

Reydon Hall

Believed to date to the late-seventeenth century, Reydon Hall once stood in an extensive estate owned by the Ewen family. During the first half of the nineteenth century it was the family home of Agnes Strickland, a well-known author and poet, although by then much of the estate had been sold off. At this time it had a small area of parkland and lawned gardens dotted with trees. The house was extended during the second half of the nineteenth century. The site includes an eighteenth century stable block and nineteenth century wall, once part of the kitchen garden enclosure, with twentieth and twenty-first century hedged garden enclosures around the house, although part of the parkland is now in separate ownership and the site of a residential property.
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Reydon Parish