Helmingham Hall, Stowmarket, England

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

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Prior to the 15th century a house known as Creke Hall, the home of the Joyce family, stood on the site of the present Helmingham Hall. In 1487 John Tollemache married Elizabeth Joyce of Helmingham and in 1509 their son Lionel married Elizabeth's niece Edith. Edith succeeded to the estate and together they pulled down the old hall and in 1510 erected the present Helmingham Hall together with a moated garden enclosure and a deer park (Williamson 1995). The garden was developed on the site of an earlier enclosure, originally protected by a wooden palisade. In 1729 Richard Tollemache, a talented surveyor, completed a survey of the Tollemache lands at Helmingham and his map of the same date shows that the old deer park of roughly 47 hectares to the north-west of the Hall had been extended to include the 'New Parke' of about 14 hectares surrounding the Hall. By this time the Tollemaches had become the earls of Dysart and between 1745 and 1760 the fourth Earl made alterations to the exterior of the Hall, added the present stable block and built a wall around the moated garden. In 1800 John Nash (1752-1835) was commissioned to make further alterations to the exterior and an estate map of 1802, together with some late 18th-century watercolours of the park (private collection), show that by this time the park had been further extended to both north and south to its present size. These paintings depict for the first time The Mount, topped by a summerhouse and surrounded on its slopes by a wilderness. The architect Anthony Salvin (1799-1881) was called in by John Tollemache, later the first Lord Tollemache, in 1840 to make alterations to the garden front of the Hall, whilst in the park the summerhouse on The Mount was replaced by an Obelisk in 1860 (guidebook). During the middle of the 20th century the fourth Lord Tollemache was responsible for the renovation and rejuvenation of the Hall and grounds whilst in the 1980s the present Lady Tollemache added two new garden enclosures to the east of the Hall. The site remains (1998) in private ownership.