Gunton Park, Roughton, England

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

A large country mansion with mid-19th-century gardens designed by William Teulon, a wooded pleasure ground of late 17th/early 18th-century origins for which Charles Bridgeman prepared designs, set within an extensive 18th-century landscape park embellished in the early 19th century partly following advice from Humphry Repton and extended in the mid-19th century by William Sawrey Gilpin.

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Gunton Park lies on the west side of the main Norwich to Cromer road, about 9 kilometres south of Cromer. Although close to the north Norfolk coast it sits in a rural area dominated by farmland. Originally one of the most extensive landscape parks in Norfolk, Gunton is roughly rectangular in shape and the area within the boundary here registered covers about 475 hectares of parkland, woodland, and arable land. It is completely surrounded by late 18th- and early 19th-century boundary plantations, now substantially altered in character by Forestry Commission replantings of conifer and poplar. The village of Suffield lies midway along the southern boundary, with Thorpe Market just to the north-east of the site. The ground is gently undulating with the Hall situated on slightly higher ground to the west of centre. Gunton Tower about 1.4 kilometres north-east of the Hall occupies one of the highest points in the park from where a fine view of the east park is offered. Other main views focus on the Hall from across the Saw Mill Lake and from the Hall south over the gently rolling parkland.

REFERENCES Used by English Heritage

M J Armstrong, History and Antiquities of Norfolk (1781) [copy held at Castle Museum, Norwich]

Country Life, 179 (9 June 1960), pp 1296-9; no 51 (21 December 1989), pp 48-53; no 1 (2 January 1997), pp 24-5

N Pevsner, The Buildings of England: North-east Norfolk and Norwich (1962), p 157

B Jones, Follies & Grottoes (1974), pp 360-1

P Willis, Charles Bridgeman (1977), plate 80A

G Carter et al, Humphry Repton (1982), pp 158-9

Landscape Institute, (October 1987), pp 36-41

G Carter, Gunton Park 1670-1987 (private report to owners 1987)

Journal of Garden History 11, (1991), nos 1 and 2, pp 45-7

The Grove, Gunton Park, Norfolk: Assessment of Importance (Debois Landscape Survey Group 1997) [addendum to restoration plan prepared in 1990]

T Williamson, The archaeology of the landscape park, BAR Brit Series 268 (1998), pp 237-8

Maps

Plan of The Grove, no date (around 1730), attributed to Charles Bridgeman (Gough Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford)

Estate survey of Gunton Park, 1754 (Norfolk Record Office)

H A Biedermann, Survey of the Gunton estate, 1784 (Norfolk Record Office)

W Faden, A new topographical map of the county of Norfolk, 1797 (Norfolk Record Office)

A Bryant, Map of the county of Norfolk, 1826 (Norfolk Record Office)

James Wright, Survey of the Gunton estate, 1835 (Suffield M38 C), (Norfolk Record Office)

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1891; 1950 edition

OS 25" to 1 mile: 2nd edition published 1905

Illustrations

Humphry Repton, St Andrew's Church, Gunton [in Armstrong 1781]

Gunton Hall, early 19th-century engraving (private collection)

Pencil drawings of Gunton Park, 1822 (private collection)

Nursery, The Observatory Tower, Gunton, 1863 (private collection)

Archival items

Design by Humphry Repton for a greenhouse at Gunton (National Trust Collection, Blickling Hall, Norfolk)
 

Description written: September 1999

Edited: February 2001