Horstead Hall

Horstead Hall was a country house in Norfolk that was demolished in the 1950s.

The village of Horstead in the county of Norfolk is not short of country houses. Towards Norwich lie Horstead House and Heggatt Hall, while towards Buxton lies the Horstead Hall estate. The house lay in the middle of substantial park. A seventeenth-century house stood here until 1835, when it was rebuilt in the Tudor style.

Owners included the Batcheler family (18th century), the Suffields, who rebuilt the house, and latterly the Birkbecks. Sir Edward Birkbeck entertained Prime Minister Lord Salisbury there in 1887. During World War II the house was requisitioned by the War Office and used by a cipher unit, who put up numerous huts in the grounds, some of which survive. The hall's Italianate watertower, which stodd among outbuildings, now derelict, is visible from the roads around the park. A chapel also survives, equally derelict.

The estate was sold in 1947 and most of the house came down soon after. Today part of the estate is used for quarrying. Substantial estate buildings survive, and part of the house remains, albeit in derelict condition. A pipe organ from the house is in the church at Ashby St. Mary.

ources

* Millican, Percy: History of Horstead and Stanninghall.

* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/64/a3023164.shtml BBC]

* Norfolk Archives Service

* [http://www.noah.norfolk.gov.uk/ShowImage.aspx?
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* Norfolk Online Access to Heritage's entry on Horstead Hall [http://www.noah.norfolk.gov.uk/Summary.aspx?pos=5]