Ditchingham Hall is an English country house, near the village of

Ditchingham Ditchingham is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. Ditchingham is located north of Bungay and south-east of Norwich, along the course of the River Waveney. History Ditchingham's name is of Anglo-Saxon origin and d ...

in south

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

, England, which is set in about of parkland landscaped by

Capability Brown Lancelot "Capability" Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783) was an English gardener and landscape architect, a notable figure in the history of the English landscape garden style. Unlike other architects ...

. The Hall is about northwest of Ditchingham off the B1332 road between

Bungay Bungay () is a market town, civil parish and electoral ward in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England.OS Explorer Map OL40: The Broads: (1:25 000) : . It lies in the Waveney Valley, west of Beccles on the edge of The Broads, and at th ...

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 ...

and

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

. It is the country house of

Earl Ferrers Earl Ferrers is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1711 for Robert Shirley, 14th Baron Ferrers of Chartley. The Shirley family descends from George Shirley (died 1622) of Astwell Castle, Northamptonshire. In 1611 he w ...

since it was inherited by the 13th Countess Ferrers. The current owner is Robert William Saswalo Shirley, 14th Earl Ferrers. It is a private house and not open to the public.

History

The house was built in 1710 by Revd John James Bedingfeld and replaced an earlier one. In 1885, the house and estate were bought from the Bedingfield family by William Carr. The hall was enlarged in 1910 by his son, also William Carr, but reduced in size in the 1980s. The writer

Diana Athill Diana Athill (21 December 1917 – 23 January 2019) was a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the greatest writers of the 20th century at the London-based publishing company Andre Deutsch Ltd. Early life ...

was brought up in Ditchingham Hall.Diana Athill: Being the other woman was what I was best at - ''Telegraph''
Retrieved 2016-11-01. The Great Storm of 1987 did great damage to the estate trees according to the German author

W. G. Sebald Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001), known as W. G. Sebald or (as he preferred) Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was according to ''The New Yorker'' ”widely recog ...

who was visiting at the time.

References

{{authority control Country houses in Norfolk Grade I listed buildings in Norfolk Grade I listed houses South Norfolk Houses completed in 1710