Lexham Hall

Lexham Hall
Norfolk
Location
Grid reference:	TF865172
Location:	52°43’13"N, 0°45’39"E
Village:	East Lexham
History
	Built 1630s / 1770s
	Country house
Information
Owned by:	Forster family
Website:	lexhamestate.co.uk

Lexham Hall is a manor house in northern Norfolk in the midst of a traditional agricultural estate of 4,400 acres in the valley of the River Nar, outside East Lexham. It is a private house and estate, with finely landscaped gardens.

The house was built in the 1630 and extended to its current Georgian form in the 1770s. Today it is Grade II listed.

History of the house

The original manor house was named Rouse’s and it stood on a moated site south-west of the present hall until abandoned in the later Middle Ages. In 1668, John Wright of Weeting acquired the manor and built a new house which stood on the site of the present house. In the 1630s he rebuilt the house, and Wright's new house forms the core of the present-day Lexham Hall.

John Wright later sold the estate in 1673 to Sir Philip Wodehouse, who owned the adjacent Manor of East Lexham. Sir Philip was a member of parliament and reputed a ‘man of great learning and a skilled musician’. The Wodehouse family owned the estate until the beginning of the 19th century. (The humorist writer P G Wodehouse descends from this family at Lexham itself: his ancestor was Sir Armine Wodehouse, the 5th Baronet.)

Significant remodelling was carried out in the early years of the 18th century by Edmund Wodehouse and in the 1770s by John Wodehouse, son and heir of Sir Armine Wodehouse.

The Palladian architect John Sanderson in 1770 produced a design for John Wodehouse’s study at Lexham but apaterntly did no more, though was engaged at the Wodehouse’s principal seat at Kimberley. Capability Brown's work at Kimberley appears to have influenced John Wodehouse’s operations in the park at Lexham in 1776.

In the early 19th century the estate passed to the Keppel family, who enlarged the Hall and made many great improvements to the cottages and farm buildings of the estate. They sold the estate shortly before the First World War, and theerafetr it passed through a number of hands including briefly from 1941 Olaf Keir, a Dane who was amassing a fortune building wartime airfields. After the Second World War, in 1946, Mr William Foster bought the estate, which family still owns it.

The distinguished Norwich architect James Fletcher-Watson, a follower of Sir Edwin Lutyens, removed the Victorian accretions to produce a stylish and handsome foursquare house blending his new work seamlessly with that of the 18th century.

Gardens

The water meadows at Lexham Hall

The layout of the early gardens is unknown but some of the early to mid 18th century walls in the kitchen garden, which include a rare example of a ‘crinkle-crankle’ wall on the north side (which today a grade II listed structure. This may have enclosed a formal garden.

Some of the 19th century woodland and the American Garden (Suttons), immediately to the south of the River Nar still exist. These were almost certainly planted in the 1840s, a creation of Mrs Frances Keppell, wife of Rev. W A W Keppell. Kew Gardens are known to have supplied 32 hardy and half-hardy trees and shrubs to be planted in the gardens in 1855. Some traces of the 19th century formal gardens also still exist.

The splendid Gardeners Cottage, together with the greenhouses and service buildings were built between 1850 and 1870 and the summerhouses were also built during this period. A large conservatory, which stood to the southwest of the Hall, was demolished prior to 1911.

The Formal Garden

The formal gardens were totally destroyed during the Second World War and the gardens of today were designed and planted by Mrs William Foster with the help of Dame Sylvia Crowe and Jim Russell between 1948 and 1986. The gardens contain many hundreds of different species of plants, shrubs and trees. Notably fine examples of Judas Tree (Cercis silaquastrum), Foxglove Tree (Paulownia tomentosa) and many interesting climbers including Actinidia kolomitka, Vitis coignetiae and mature Wisterias together with ‘old fashioned’ shrub, climbing and species roses can be found in the Formal Garden.

The Woodland Garden contains numerous fine examples of Giant Redwood (Sequoiadendron) over 130 feet high, Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), Coastal Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), Handkerchief Tree (Davidia involucrata), Katsura Tree (Cercidyphyllum japonica) and mature Magnolias. There is a fine collection of rhododendrons, many dating back over 50 years, a Tulip Tree (Liriodendron fastigiata), a Bladdernut (Staphyllea pinnata) and a superb collection of Camellias.

Today the gardens are opened five days a year for charity which includes several days for the National Gardens Scheme.

Outside links

• Lexham Estate