Culford Park in Culford,

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

, England, is a

country house image:Blenheim - Blenheim Palace - 20210417125239.jpg, 300px, Blenheim Palace - Oxfordshire An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a Townhou ...

that is the former seat of the

Bacon Bacon is a type of Curing (food preservation), salt-cured pork made from various cuts of meat, cuts, typically the pork belly, belly or less fatty parts of the back. It is eaten as a side dish (particularly in breakfasts), used as a central in ...

Cornwallis Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis (31 December 1738 – 5 October 1805) was a British Army officer, Whig politician and colonial administrator. In the United States and United Kingdom, he is best known as one of the leading Britis ...

and Cadogan families, and now the home of

Culford School Culford School, formerly the East Anglian School for Boys, is a co-educational Private schools in the United Kingdom, private boarding school, boarding and day school for pupils age 1–18 in the village of Culford, north of Bury St Edmunds in ...

History of the Park

From at least 1429 the Coote family had lived at Culford and in 1524 Christopher Coote was lord of the manor. In 1540 Culford was granted by the

Crown A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, parti ...

to the Bacon family and in 1591 Sir Nicholas Bacon built a red-brick hall on the same site as the present house. The estate passed to the Cornwallis family in 1660 and during the middle of the 18th century 'T Wright' (possibly Thomas Wright (1711-86), the landscape gardener) was employed. Wright produced a map of the park dated 1742 which shows a formal landscape of avenues, rides and vistas, through geometrically shaped blocks of woodland. Between 1790 and 1796

Samuel Wyatt Samuel Wyatt (8 September 1737 – 8 February 1807) was an English architect and engineer. A member of the Wyatt family, which included several notable 18th- and 19th-century English architects, his work was primarily in a neoclassical style. C ...

was commissioned to remodel the house for the first Marquis Cornwallis and in 1791

Humphry Repton Humphry Repton (21 April 1752 – 24 March 1818) was the last great designer of the classic phase of the English landscape garden, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown. His style is thought of as the precursor of the more intric ...

(1752-1818) provided advice on landscaping the park, preparing a Red Book in 1792 (Williamson 1993). The estate remained in the Cornwallis family until the second Marquess died in 1823, by which time it had been greatly extended. Culford was sold the following year to

Richard Benyon De Beauvoir Richard Benyon De Beauvoir (born Benyon; 28 April 1770 – 22 March 1854) was a 19th-century British politician, landowner, philanthropist, and High Sheriff of Berkshire. Background He was born in Westminster, the eldest son of politician Richar ...

and an estate map of 1834 shows the major expansion of the designed landscape on all boundaries. From circa 1839 the Rev Edward Benyon continued to embellish the estate. In 1889 the estate was sold again, this time to the fifth Earl Cadogan who commissioned the architect William Young to remodel the house in the Italian style. New stables were built, the gardens were altered and considerable additions made to the village. Following the death of the sixth Earl in 1933 the estate was sold. The core of the park, together with the house, became the home of

(bought 1935) in whose hands it remain today.

Iron bridge

Crossing the lake to West of the Hall is an iron bridge constructed by

c.1804. The design is closely based on a bridge patented by Wyatt in 1800 and is made of channelled granite abutments from which five tubular cast-iron sections repeated six times form the 60ft span, the largest of the eight surviving cast iron bridges built between 1790 - 1810. The 80 tons of iron castings were produced by Hawks and Co of

Gateshead Gateshead () is a town in the Gateshead Metropolitan Borough of Tyne and Wear, England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank. The town's attractions include the twenty metre tall Angel of the North sculpture on the town's southern outskirts, ...

at a cost of £1,457. The bridge is of exceptional interest as one of the earliest bridges with an unmodified cast-iron structure to survive, and is the earliest known example with hollow ribs. The structure received a Grade I listing on 15 May 1996. Iron Bridge at Culford 3

External links

* *
Culford School website

References

{{coord, 52.300921, N, 0.689156, E, display=title Grade II* listed buildings in Suffolk Country houses in Suffolk Culford