Ditchingham Hall, Lowestoft, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Ditchingham Hall was built around 1710 for the Rev John James Bedingfeld, to replace an old house with an enclosed garden on the same site (Williamson 1998), the estates of Ditchingham and neighbouring Hedenham having passed into the family's hands by marriage with the Bosards in the late 15th century. The new hall was given an extensive formal landscape of walled gardens and approach avenues. During the course of the 18th century three generations of the Bedingfelds were responsible for the gradual remodelling of the landscape and were described in an estate survey by Joseph Rundall in 1764 as having devoted some effort to the setting of the house. By 1778 when it was illustrated by James Butcher (NLSL), it had become a fine open landscape park with an extensive serpentine lake. The present owners (1999) believe the park to have been the work of Lancelot Brown (1716-83); a plan said to be in his hand no longer survives at the Hall. During the 19th century the Bedingfeld family continued to make small changes to the park, including extensions to the south-east and the establishment of perimeter belts, although the exact details are not recorded. In 1885 the Bedingfelds sold the estate and it was purchased, along with the adjacent Hedenham Hall, by William Carr, an antiquary who wrote for the Dictionary of National Biography. Carr commissioned the architect Herbert J Green to enlarge the Hall in 1910 and to add a balustrated terrace on the south front, whilst the parks of Ditchingham and Hedenham were linked by an oak-lined drive. William Carr's daughter and her husband Lord Ferrers lived at Hedenham until Brigadier Carr's death in 1981 when they moved into Ditchingham, calling on the Norfolk architects Fielden and Mawson to renovate and reduce the size of the Hall. The lake was dredged and the pleasure grounds reclaimed. The site remains (1999) in single private ownership.