The Suffolk Gardens Trust is pleased to be offering a series of four talks to highlight some aspects of the county’s rich gardening heritage. It is offered as a companion to the newly-launched co-operative project on ‘Suffolk’s Unforgettable Garden Story’ by The Gardens Trust and the Suffolk Gardens Trust, with funding by Historic England. This seeks to encourage research into the historic parks and gardens, public parks, cemeteries and other good examples of designed landscapes of Suffolk, with the overarching aim of adding layers of protection to these green spaces and to promote their future survival.
All that is left of Tendring Hall is a lonely doorway, flanked by Ionic columns, that stands starkly overlooking its park in the Stour valley of south Suffolk. Demolished in 1955, the Hall was built in 1784 for Admiral Sir Joshua Rowley by Sir John Soane, replacing a sequence of houses that stretches back into the Middle Ages, when this was a deer park. Sir Joshua’s son, Sir William Rowley, added to his father’s works by commissioning a Red Book in 1791 from the Suffolk-born landscape designer, Humphry Repton. Despite Repton’s efforts, the park still contains significant features from earlier designed landscapes, most notably a garden canal, a much-favoured embellishment of early-17th-century Suffolk gardens.
Lecturer Edward Martin is the chairman of the Suffolk Gardens Trust and a vice-president of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History. Now retired, he worked as an archaeologist with Suffolk County Council for many years, specialising in prehistory and historic landscape studies, and has lectured widely on the archaeology, history, landscape, buildings and gardens of Suffolk. His published works cover a diversity of subjects, from Bronze Age burial mounds, through medieval field systems to 18th-century gardens.
The link HERE is for a ticket costing £16 for the entire course of 4 sessions or you may purchase a ticket for this individual session, costing £5 via the link HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.
