The Ham Nomads

28 Oct 2014. <GB-ENG> Bury Saint Edmunds (Ickworth), & Thetford (King's Forest), Suffolk —

After a wonderfully quiet night in the forest, today was to be a Bury St Edmunds day. Two destinations planned — Ickworth Hall (south of the city) and the Theatre Royal (in the city itself).

We went to Ickworth, and almost immediately went on a guided tour inside the house. This basically took us through three rooms, as a 'taster' for the rest of the house. Elizabeth, our guide, knew her stuff, and went through the rooms giving us a history of the family at the same time. Ickworth was in the possession of the Hervey family since the mid-fifteenth century. The Herveys, royalists, enjoyed royal patronage under the Tudors and the Stuarts. In 1701, John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, demolished the then derelict manor house, but the family only developed (and enjoyed) the gardens, living in a converted farmhouse. It was Frederick Augustus, the 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry (known as the Earl-Bishop) who started work on the hall to house his estranged family and his art collection. But he died, and it was his son Frederick William, the 5th Earl and later 1st Marquess of Bristol, who finally completed the hall. Later on the 4th Marquess married the heiress Theodora Wythes, and it was she who did considerable modernisation to the hall, installing plumbing, heating, electricity — everything that makes it a livable 20th century building. In 1956 the hall passed to the National Trust (in lieu of death duties), although the family continued to live in the east wing right up to 1996.

The front garden!

After going through the house, we planned to go in to Bury St Edmunds to visit the Theatre Royal, the only Regency theatre still functioning in the country. This was a dismal failure, as the 'free parking' the Trust said was available nearby has now become 'Residents Only Parking', and the town itself is a system of narrow one-way streets — so we gave up on this mission, and returned to Ickworth.

The entrance hall, with the statue The Fury of Athamas

Cleaning the Library chandelier

The Dining Room

A bedroom chandelier

By this time, the hall was free entry, and you could work your way round the whole place (well, those parts of it that are not private apartments!). We explored the hall for about another hour, then went out and walked down to the walled garden, which was a bit of a surprise — much of it has been planted as a wildflower meadow, and is still (approaching the end of autumn) full of flashes of colour. The walled garden is a complex of six, with the meadow behind the other five, and these last being open to the Canal Lake to the north. One section (the westernmost) is devoted to plots for the children of the Ickworth Park Primary School, two are kitchen gardens, the middle one is a lawn in front of a summer house, and the easternmost is an orchard, with plantings of dahlias and other brightly-hued flowers around the edge and up the walls. Totally delightful, and a great splash of colour as the seasons turn to grey (although today was fine and sunny, with cloudless blue skies!)

After a wonderful relaxed day at Ickworth, we returned to King's Forest for another quiet night.

Distance driven — today, 46 miles ( 74 km ); to date, 9,317 miles ( 14,995 km )