Blickling Hall

Blickling Hall is a Jacobean mansion standing in 5,000 acres of parkland beside the River Bure near Blickling village in Norfolk. The present house replaced a Tudor building for Sir Henry Hobart from 1616, designed by Robert Lyminge. Between 1499 and 1505 the estate belonged to the Boleyn family, and tradition places the birth of Anne Boleyn there in about 1507. The library holds one of England’s most important collections, with 13,000 to 14,000 volumes gathered by Sir Richard Ellys. The house passed to the National Trust in 1940 after the death of Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian. The estate’s history includes Sir John Fastolf, whose coat of arms remains on display, and the Boleyns whose children Mary, George and Anne were probably born at Blickling. Frances Egerton managed the family’s debts while caring for her husband Sir John Hobart, 2nd Baronet, who completed the Jacobean house. In the 18th century the 1st Earl of Buckinghamshire added a ha-ha and Doric Temple, and his son remodelled the gardens into a sweeping landscape. During the Second World War the hall served as an officers’ mess for nearby RAF Oulton. Visitors walk through the grand Jacobean interiors and the historic library with its rare manuscripts. The gardens include an 18th-century orangery, a wilderness planted with natural clumps of trees, and a garden mount offering wide views over the flat Norfolk countryside. The grounds cover woodland, parkland and farmland managed by the National Trust. A museum in the estate remembers the RAF pilots and ground crew who trained on the adjacent lake. The house and gardens remain open under the name Blickling Estate.