On Sunday we decided to have a short pootle out to a Norfolk garden which was open to the public.
This one was in the Tas Valley a short distance from our cricket club so we knew how to get there.
The property was called The Long Barn and it was set in acres of parkland with attractive lawns. Of course I checked out the owner and he turned out to be a wine importer of some note.
But it was another property that grabbed our attention and we could see it in the distance as we walked round the park. It looked Tudor but turned out to be Elizabethan.
How many of these properties exist unnoticed in rural Norfolk?
This property was Rainthorpe Hall and the last time it came on the market it sold for £2.5 million. It is now estimated to be worth at least £2.7 million.
I'm always slightly uneasy about putting photographs and details of other people's property on the internet but details of Rainthorpe Hall are readily available. You may have driven past its long drive without realising just how much history there is just off a country road in a river valley.
There is evidence that Rainthorpe Hall existed in some form before 1500 but most of it was destroyed by fire around that date. The property has been extensively added to through the ages.
A number of high profile people have owned the hall including members of the Walpole family, an economist and a barrister. Apparently there were some wild parties at the place in the 20th century.
It gets even more fascinating as Rainthorpe itself is a lost Norfolk village. Saxon and medieval pottery along with Roman tiles have been found in the area
In the Domesday Book, Rainthorpe had no more than 10 households but there was confusion about the ownership of land.
The Plague hit what few residents there were of Rainthorpe and by 1450 it had ceased to exist as a separate parish and was merged with Newton Flotman.
One of the most interesting owners was J Maurice Hastings whose wife Rosemary was an American heiress whose family made its fortune from producing the paper for the printing of dollar bills. Rosemary raised funds for local buildings and good causes and was chair of the local WI
Fetes, dances and other events were held at Rainthorpe, a theatre continued to be used for school productions and by the village drama group and the football club played its early home matches on one of the Rainthorpe fields, though it was not popular with visiting teams, given its slope and an abundance of mole hills.
Staffing at Rainthorpe provided local employment for several people in the village, and fetes and church events continued to be held there until well into the 1970s. Today the hall is privately owned.
Hope you enjoy some of today's photographs, mainly taken of the garden we visited but also of Rainthorpe Hall from a distance.
Sources
Tasburgh History Group
Wikipedia