(also previously known as Tattingstone Park)
Parish: TATTINGSTONE
District Council: BABERGH
TM 139 367
Not open to the public
In the far south-east corner of Suffolk, c. 3.2km (5mls) south of Ipswich, Tattingstone Place (Grade II) lies on the Shotley peninsular between the Stour and Orwell rivers. It is an area of mixed soils where a number of estates were established with designed parks surrounding their mansions, for example nearby Woolverstone Hall, Stutton Hall and Crow Hall. The house and parkland of Tattingstone Place are on the southern edge of Tattingstone village. The site was once on high ground overlooking the valley of the Tattingstone Brook that flowed eastward from near Bentley and then south into the River Stour, it’s course taking it through a series of fishponds. These developed into an ornamental ribbon lake, possibly part of an elaborate eighteenth century water garden, stocked for hunting, sporting pursuits and used as pleasure grounds.
Today Tattingstone Place stands on the shore of Alton Water reservoir, which was constructed during the 1970s and 80s by the construction of a dam to supply the water needs of southern Suffolk, thus flooding the valley with a substantial part of the designed parkland and gardens associated with the house lost.
OWNERS OF TATTINGSTONE PLACE ESTATE
Once owned by the Beaumont family, between 1721 and 1726 Thomas White Esq. of Southampton Street near Covent Garden in London bought from a number of owners the manor of Tattingstone, Tattingstone Estate comprising Tattingstone Hall Farm, a ‘messeage’ called Tattingstone Place, Pond Hall Farm and various woods and land extending to c. 324ha (800a). Thomas built a new mansion on the ‘messeage’ site, which was occupied by his son, also Thomas, in 1764. In 1808 son Thomas White died aged eight-eight at Tattingstone Place, a comment at the time stating ‘the poor have lost an active and benevolent friend’. The estate passed to Rear Admiral Thomas Western (1761–1814), first cousin to Thomas White’s father, who was living there in 1813 when Constable was commissioned to paint his portrait. By the time of the tithe map of 1837 the estate was owned by his son, Thomas Burch Western Esq. (1795–1873), whose mother was Mary, the daughter of Thomas Burch of Bermuda in the West Indies. He had been born at Tattingstone but later made his home in Essex when he inherited a number of Essex estates including Felix Hall, Kelvedon (Grade II) and Rivenhall (Grade II*). Thomas was created a baronet in 1864 and MP for North Essex 1865–68.
There followed a long period when Tattingstone Place and its surrounding parkland was leased out, during which time its ownership passed down through the Western family. At the time of the tithe apportionment in 1837 it was home to William Rhodes James Esq. and his family, Tattingstone Hall Farm and surroundings formed part of the estate and were occupied by farmer John Cooper, with the rest of the estate rented to various other tenants. Later occupants of Tattingstone Place were Hunter Rodwell Esq., Robert Augustus Hanky Hirst and in 1847 Sir George Crewe, Bart. At times the Western family appear to have returned to Tattingstone, it being documented that in 1850 Sir Thomas Charles Callis Western, 3rd Bart, was born in the house, although by the following year he appears on the census as living at Felix Hall with his parents and grandparents.
Known at the time as Tattingstone Park Estate, its c. 844ha (2,085a) were for sale in 1893 and described as a residential sporting property. However, it failed to sell as a whole and was broken up into separate lots. Tattingstone Place mansion and lands extending to 767ha (1,900a) were sold soon after to Roger Kerrison for £32,500. It passed to his son, Roger Orme Kerrison, JP and Lord of the Manor, who was living there with his wife, Diana Elizabeth and their children in 1911. Roger died during World War I and the following year his widow married Augustus W. Addinsell. By 1922 Mrs Diana Addinsell is registered as the occupier of Tattingstone Place and the following year it was sold to Philip Cobbold of the Ipswich brewing family. It passed to Capt. Philip Wyndham Cobbold, Esq. and after his death the estate was sold in 1947. In the 1960s it appears to have been sold once more and by 1970 it had been bought by Anglian Water Company during the construction of the reservoir. Much of the land was flooded and the house was left unoccupied. With the completion of the reservoir in 1984 the remaining site was once more for sale and advertised as a ‘Georgian country house’ with c. 2.5ha (6a) of gardens and grounds, the rest of the estate having been sold in various lots over the preceding forty years.
TATTINGSTONE PLACE
The Beumont family’s original house is believed to have been demolished and a new house built on a different site after Thomas White bought Tattingstone manor and lands in the 1720s. Although said to be ‘newly built’ in 1764, a surviving account dated 1740 for work done for Thomas by master builder Benjamin Timbrell suggests Benjamin’s previous prestigious work on properties in London, such as Grosvenor Square on the Grosvenor Estate, make him a likely candidate as the builder of all or part of Thomas’s new mansion. This implies an earlier construction date, or perhaps an earlier start to construction that continued for many years. The three-storey red brick mansion was built with the entrance front facing west and garden elevations to the south and east. The tithe map of 1837 shows a main rectangular block and an attached additional long, narrow wing to the north-east. This joined a series of enclosures and buildings, named as ‘farmyards and buildings’ on the tithe apportionment. The coach house and stables were to the north of the house, where the drives converged from north and west, and described on the tithe apportionment as combined with shrubberies, presumably shielding them from view as carriages made their way to the entrance front of the house. On the south side of the farmyard there was a strip of garden with a hot house.
Henry Davy’s 1842 lithograph of the mansion shows an idyllic scene of a red brick mansion towards the top of rising ground surrounded by wooded parkland. By the time of the 1887 OS map a covered verandah had been added to the south elevation of the main block with other additions made to the west entrance elevation.
A large entrance hall was added during the twentieth century, although few other changes have taken place to the main house except the addition of a verandah with attached pergola to the lower, narrow east wing. Today the site includes a number of separate properties created from the various outbuildings around the house.
THE PARKLAND AND GARDENS
The history and designed landscapes of Tattingstone Hall and Tattingstone Place were once inextricably linked by a series of fishponds that are shown in a large, vaguely-defined park on Faden’s 1736 map drawn soon after the estate was bought by Thomas White. Over the following twenty-five years the present house was built and it seems likely that Thomas began to develop his extensive park during this period.
Hodskinson’s 1784 map gives more detail and shows a large area of parkland that merges with ancient woodland along its northern boundary. A small fragment survives in Woodley Wood, which is now on the northern side of the reservoir. The park is shown dissected by an elaborate ribbon of water with the moated Tattingstone Hall at its head. Tracks crossed the water from the north, near the moated house, and from the east to converge at the site of Tattingstone Place. This water feature has similarities to the nearby Holbrook Gardens, designed for Sir Charles Kent, who owned the gardens in 1784 but lived at Fornham St Genevieve. He may possibly have had the idea of building a house on the site, later abandoned. The Holbrook gardens included a serpentine lake crossed by two bridges and three smaller ponds with woodland walks and may have been the inspiration for water gardens created from the existing fish ponds in the valley at Tattingstone that were probably used for the same recreational purposes. Benjamin Timbrell’s building accounts to Thomas White for 1738–40 mention ‘Garden walls’, ‘post and railes and gate posts with cut heads’, ‘pallisade gates and door’ and even ‘latches for garden gates’, which may make reference to work done in the park and along the south wall of the farmyard to the north-east of the house. To extend the views and give the illusion of a more extensive park, beyond the park’s boundary to the south there is a surviving folly called The Tattingstone Wonder (Grade II*) that was created from an older building by Thomas White c. 1790. Viewed from the mansion, it looks like a flint church with a tower, but on its south side its form is that of red brick cottages.
Although the vast majority of the estate was tenanted by 1837, Thomas Burch Western, the owner at the time, is recorded on the tithe apportionment of that year to have kept the ribbon of fishponds to the east of Tattingstone Place for his own use, probably for fishing and shooting of wild fowl. The tithe map shows the mansion surrounded by parkland crossed by drives, one leading to the north-west and the village with a kitchen garden at the entrance, another to the north-east passing a rookery with an attached narrow ribbon of small ponds called ‘Pike Stew’ on the tithe apportionment. It continued to a bridge over the large ponds before branching off to Tattingstone Hall and beyond to the north along a degraded avenue of trees leading to the site of a chapel, said to be St Margaret’s Free Chapel, which is documented in 1434 and 1471 when owned by the Earl of Oxford. The site is now on the banks of Alton Reservoir. Branching off the north-western drive, a further track led eastwards, bridged the fishponds and continued on beyond the water to the south-east towards a small plot of remote gardens called ‘Lower Garden’ and occupied by James William Rhodes, Esq. This had been incorporated into an expanded parkland by the end of the century. South-west of the house, an ice house stood in a copse of trees within the parkland, which was described as well-wooded in 1844. The pleasure gardens sat within a semi-circular enclosure, shown in more detail on the 1887 OS map to be a ha-ha that had expanded to wrap-around the farmyard enclosure north-east of the house. This enclosure appears to have been incorporated into the pleasure gardens and is recorded as ‘Hot House and Garden’ on the tithe apportionment.
The 1887 OS map shows the park dotted with freestanding trees, predominantly deciduous but also with coniferous clumps, one of which surrounded the site of an ice house and can be seen south-west of Tattingstone Place towards the boundary of the park. The clump of trees survives today, although it is unknown if the icehouse still exists. Both earlier drives still linked the house to the village and Tattingstone Hall, with the more southern track crossing the water at a sluice and leading to a number of other tracks criss-crossing the parkland east of the water. An area called ‘Ash Ground’ lay on the edge of the parkland beside the folly to the south of the house, a shelterbelt of trees ran along the western boundary of the park and the rookery survived to the north-east. A boathouse is shown on the western shore of the largest fishpond to the south-east of the house.
At this time the pleasure gardens were made up of areas of lawn dotted with trees and shrubberies with a path beside the curving ha-ha. East of the house, an additional path led down the valley towards the water, passing glasshouses that were not shown on the earlier tithe map. These appear to have been a lean-to glasshouse with an adjacent freestanding conservatory or orangery.
A further path crossed a garden terrace area, installed to deal with the sloping nature of the site. It is not known who designed this feature, although Tattingstone is circled on a map of Suffolk by William Andrews Nesfield that shows a number of Suffolk country houses. This map is preserved among a private collection of his papers in Australia, but it is unclear if these were commissions or potential clients. No further documentary evidence exists to confirm that he made any changes at Tattingstone. However, Nesfield is known to have worked on a number of Suffolk estates, notably the surviving earthworks of terraces and formal garden 1840–60 at Flixton Hall; the raised, although altered, terrace, retaining walls and maze c. 1855 at Somerleyton (Grade II* Park and Garden); the surviving listed parterre and knot garden c. 1867 at Chantry Park, Ipswich (Grade II Park and Garden) and at the neighbouring estate at Woolverstone (Grade II) where steps, a parterre, retaining wall and pool basin from the 1850s survive. Whilst Tattingstone Place was leased during much of the period Nesfield was active in Suffolk, it is documented that the owners, the Western family, had commissioned Nesfield to work on their home at Felix Hall in Essex, which raises the possibility that the garden terrace at Tattingstone could be his work, albeit today in an altered form. From the terraced area the path continued beyond the hot house shown on the tithe map before turning northward, passing a gasometer and into the rookery, where it branched out into a number of cross-paths that gave an extension to walks within the gardens.
In 1837 the kitchen garden was at the entrance to the main north drive, near the parish church. This may have continued to serve the same purpose by the 1880s, although the partly-enclosed farmyard that was shown on the tithe map attached to the north-east end of the house, appears to have been converted and extended to create a walled garden, open at its eastern end to give views of the water and parkland beyond, so could possibly have been used for ornamental planting or to produce fruit and vegetables for the house. It had perimeter and cross-paths with a lean-to glasshouse on the inside of its north wall and an orchard at its eastern end. Some walls remain, including the southern eighteenth-century garden wall (Grade II) built of red brick to various heights from c. 3.1m (10ft) to 5m (16ft) high. A spur to the wall’s south-east end has a twentieth-century Tudor-style arched gateway, said to have been added by the Cobbold family. The northern wall has been much altered, part plastered and is not listed.
At the time of the sale in 1893 the sales particulars describe the mansion and ‘extensive pleasure grounds’, over c. 40.5ha (100a) of woods and plantations with partridge and pheasant shooting. Also part of the estate were Tattingstone Hall, Craig Hall, Alton Hall and Holbrook, Pond Farm and the Folly.
There was little change to the park and gardens during the first half of the twentieth century and aerial photographs from 1946 and 1947 show a number of earthworks of ditches associated with the house and ponds for water management. It was not until the 1970s and 80s when the whole landscape of Tattingstone Place park and gardens was transformed and mostly destroyed when the valley of the Tattingstone Brook was flooded by the construction of the dam to create Alton Water. Much of the parkland was lost, particularly to the east. The house now stood much closer to the water and the walled enclosure was truncated at its eastern end. The once important moated seventeenth century manor house of Tattingstone Hall and farm with its sixteenth century origins, plus Alton Mill (also known as Stutton Mill) were to be under water when the reservoir was built so the buildings were demolished, although the mill was dismantled and re-erected at the museum at Abbots Hall in Stowmarket, once The Museum of East Anglian Life but in 2022 renamed The Food Museum.
The end of the twentieth century saw Tattingstone Place site broken up to leave the house with just c. 2.5ha (6a) of gardens that have been renovated and refurbished. The rest was split into a number of separate properties. Park House has been built incorporating older farmyard buildings attached to the walled garden and the original coach house and stables to the north of the house are now two cottages. A further small barn to the north of the walled garden has become a contemporary home with views over the water. Today Alton Water provides conservation areas, bird watching and recreational sports.
SOURCES:
Birch, Mel, Suffolk’s Ancient Sites Historic Places, 2004.
Burke’s Peerage 1880. A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire.
Copinger, W. A., The Manors of Suffolk, Vol. 6, 1910.
Davy, David, Elisha, A Journal of Excursions Through the County of Suffolk, 1823–1844 reproduced by The Suffolk Records Society.
Denny, A. H., Revd, ‘Henry Davy, 1793–1865’ in Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, Vol. XXIX Part 1, 1961.
Evans, Shirley Rose, Masters of their Craft; The Art, Architecture and Garden Design of the Nesfields, 2014.
Kelly’s Directory of Suffolk, 1892, 1906, 1912, 1914, 1916, 1918, 1921, 1922, 1929, 1937, 1942.
Page, Augustine, Topographical and Genealogical, The County of Suffolk, A Supplement to the Suffolk Traveller (of J. Kirby), compiled 1811 and published in 1847 by Page, Joshua.
Scarfe, Norman, editor and translator of De La Rochefoucard, A Frenchman’s Year in Suffolk, 1784.
Stutton Local History Group, Journal No. 14, April 1996.
Tattingstone Parish Plan, 2006.
The Athenaeum, Vol. 4, 1808.
Walford, Edward, County Families of the United Kingdom; or, Royal Manual of the Titled and Untitled Aristocracy of Great Britain and Ireland, 1860, 1880.
White, William, History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Suffolk, 1884.
Who’s Who, 1897.
Williamson, Tom, Suffolk’s Gardens and Parks, 2000.
Tattingstone Parish Council, http://tattingstone.onesuffolk.net/village-history/john-constable/ (accessed September 2021).
Survey of London: Volume 39, the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 1 (General History) https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol39/pt1/pp24-29 (accessed September 2021).
Suffolk Gardens Trust Memorable Parks and Garden https://suffolkgardenstrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/FLIXTON-HALL-and-PARK.pdf
Census: 1871, 1891, 1911.
Kirby’s 1736 map of Suffolk.
Hodskinson’s Map of Suffolk in 1783.
1837 tithe map and apportionment.
1887 (surveyed 1881) Ordnance Survey map.
1904 (revised 1902) OS map.
2024 Google aerial map (Imagery © Bluesky, CNES / Airbus, Getmapping plc, Infoterra Lts & Bluesky, Maxar Technologies, Map data © 2024).
Heritage Assets:
Suffolk Historic Environment Record (SHER): TAT 002, TAT 015, TAT 025, TAT 048, HBK 016.
Tattingstone Place (Grade II), Historic England No: 1351985.
Felix Hall, Kelvedon, Essex (Grade II), Historic England No: 116532.
Rivenhall Place, Rivenhall, Essex (Grade II), Historic England No: 113575. The Tattingstone Wonder (Grade II), Historic England No: 1033392.
Garden wall attached to eastern face of Tattingstone Place (Grade II), Historic England No: 1180425.
Parterre retaining walls, urns, steps…to rear of Woolverstone Hall (Grade II), Historic England No: 1281381.
Park and Garden, Chantry Park, Ipswich (Grade II), Historic England Parks and Gardens No: 1000271.
Somerleyton Park (Grade II*), Historic England Parks and Gardens No: 1000188.
Suffolk Record Office (now Suffolk Archives):
SRO (The Hold) HB8/1/932. Manor of Tattingstone (documents related to the title to the manor and associated properties), 1721/2–1726.
SRO (Ipswich) HD 331. Account for work done at Tattingstone Place, for Thomas White by Benjamin Timbrell, 1740.
SRO (Ipswich) FB75/N1/1. Particulars of the sale of Tattingstone Park estate, 1893.
SRO (Ipswich) HD2833/2/SC407/1. Particulars, with plans and view, of Tattingstone Park Estate, 2 August 1893.
SRO (Ipswich) HE402/1/1947/21. Catalogue of the residue of furniture, silver and miscellaneous effects of Tattingstone Place, 7 May 1947.
SRO (Ipswich) HD2833/1/SC407/3. Particulars and conditions of sale of the remaining portion of Tattingstone Place, 29 August 1950.
SRO (Ipswich), HE402/1/1966/18. Catalogue of remaining contents of Tattingstone Place, 29 September 1966.
SRO (Ipswich) HD2833/1/SC407/4. Sales particulars for Tattingstone Place, 1984.
Site ownership: Private
Study written: April 2024
Type of Study: Desktop
Written by: Tina Ranft
Amended:
