Heveningham Hall

Suffolk

Heveningham Hall was one of Capability Brown’s last designs before he died. His detailed watercolours were tantalizingly never taken forward. Two hundred years later new ownership made it possible to realize Brown’s ideas and over the last 30 years it has been possible to implement his plans for 2000 acres of parkland and 2 kilometres of lakes. The River Blyth has been restored to its mediaeval meanders and up to 20 hectares of broadleaf woodland is being planted each year. The wet meadows, parkland grazing and woodland management are all integrated into a fifty-year habitat plan.

Behind the eighteenth-century Hall a later, unsuccessful, Victorian garden has been replaced with a completely new landform of sweeping grass terraces. The terraces flow with the rising land, arcing in a Golden Section fan that keeps the veteran trees and gives the house room to breathe.

The design was inspired by the topography, the setting of the Hall and the long tradition of earth sculpting that so suits the British climate.