The Park owned by the Wilson family

Captain George Wilson, c.1790

The Redgrave Estate passed into the Wilson family in 1799, when Thomas Holt died.
His sister Lucinda had married Thomas Wilson (1725-1808). He bequeathed the Estate to his nephew, their eldest son, George Wilson (1756-1826). He had a distinguished naval career, and became one of the four Admirals of the Fleet. He commissioned a survey of the Estate in 1803, including a map of the Park.

Click here for Wilson family history.

Surviving Estate accounts, newspaper cuttings and other writings show what life was like at the Hall. Money flowed like water - and so did wine! In 1804 A hogshead barrel (52 gallons) of sherry costing £50.12s - a small fortune in those days - was shipped from Gibraltar to Redgrave, guarded by men carrying blunderbusses. The high price of grain during, and after, the Napoleonic War ensured a steady income from the Estate - while guaranteeing severe hardship for the labouring poor. The Enclosures of 1819 added to the wealth of the Estate, while depriving many poor people of access to land they needed for subsistence. However the Estate seems to have escaped the rural protests and riots which took place for many years in surrounding parts of Suffolk.

Admiral Wilson's eldest son, George St Vincent (1806-1852), seems to have been an ambitious spendthrift, who entertained beyond his means. He continued his father's high living (in the 1830's King William IV stayed at the Hall, and admired the Park, calling it the most beautiful combination of land and water in Eastern England). He loved hunting, and kept a pack of foxhounds at The Kennels beside the Lake. A guidebook of 1829 described the Park "as one of the most beautiful spots in the county".

By 1845 the finances of the Estate were in a bad way. George St. V. moved out of the Hall, and it was let to tenants to bring in extra money. He died of a heart attack at Epsom Races in 1852.

George St Vincent Wilson, c.1830
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In 1865 George Holt Wilson married Lucy James, and two years later they took up residence at the Hall. The new art of photography, pioneered locally by Cleer S. Alger of Diss, captured their home life.

Group portrait by C.S. Alger, c.1867

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Family group by the Orangery, c.1877

(Who are they? click image for 30kb close up)

THE WILSONS MOVE OUT OF THE HALL
In 1898 financial problems forced George Holt Wilson to move out of Redgrave Hall, and he took up residence at Broom Hills house, Rickinghall. He was the last of the Wilsons to live at the Hall. Thereafter it was let to various tenants including the Horsfall family and Brigadier General Lord Playfair. George Holt Wilson's eldest son, George Rowland (1867-1928) took a keen interest in the business of the Estate. However its finances were in a bad way. It is said that as a young man he went to his father to ask for £1,000 to invest in a brewery with a friend in the Guiness family. "Go and ask my accountant" he replied. The accountant said he could not raise even 1,000 pennies, because the Estate was so deeply mortgaged. Had he been able to do so, the family's fortunes may have changed, as the Estate might have gained an important outside source of income. George Rowland resolved to turn his hand to farming, to bring it to a state of greater profitability. In 1898 he married Gwendolen Powell (daughter of the Vicar of Dorstone, Herefordshire), and they lived in various farm houses on the Estate: first Hinderclay Hall, then Burgate Hall, and after 1915, Snape Hill, at Rickinghall.
In the First World War troops were billeted in the Park. Click here for photographs.

THE SALE OF ESTATE RECORDS Between 1919 and 1921 George Holt Wilson sold most of the contents of the Muniment Room at the Hall. This was a room on the ground floor which contained Estate and manorial records and legal documents relating to the successive owners of the Estate dating back to the Middle Ages. The bulk of the early material went to the University of Chicago, where it forms an uniquely important collection of documents for studying Mediaeval and Tudor history. Two boxes of documents from the Muniment Room survive in the Holt-Wilson family. They comprise some 10,000 items dating from 1770 to 1870, and provide a valuable insight into the workings of the Estate, and the lives of the people who depended on it for a living. The documents have been catalogued by the Redgrave History Group as part of a six-year research project.

THREE SQUIRES IN FOUR YEARS In 1924 George Holt Wilson died, and his son George Rowland died in 1928. The Estate therefore had to pay two lots of death duties tax in four years. This set the scene for the climate of financial stringency facing John Holt Wilson (1900-1963) when he took over running the Estate.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE PARK
In the 1930's a series of photographs were made of the Park, with a view to letting or selling it. They show a stunningly beautiful landscape of mature and veteran trees, with views down to the sinuous expanse of the Lake, and the Hall as a compact focal point. They show the realisation of 'Capability' Brown's vision some 160 years after it was conceived, and the result is a masterpiece. However the landscape of the Park today is a painful reminder of the tides of change in the 20th century which have destroyed that vision.


THE END OF THE HALL
For a few years in the 1930's John Holt Wilson was able to let the Hall as a hotel and country club. In 1936 he was once again advertising for tenants. In 1937 he drew up modernisation plans to make it easier to let. When the Second World War came he rejoined his old regiment, the Royal Artillery. When he returned from the Far East in 1945 he found the world of Redgrave Park had changed. The biggest U.S. Airforce hospital in Western Europe occupied most of the north-eastern side, and a prisoner of war camp was built on the Warren. A succession of military personnel (British and American) had been billeted in the Hall, and had damaged it in many places. American soldiers had broken into the garden cottage where family portraits were stored, and had cut the paintings - in some cases just the heads - from their frames to send home as souvenirs. Statues had been used for target practice. The gardens had become a wilderness. According to gamekeeper 'Wop' Garnham, British soldiers - including officers - of the Middlesex Regiment were among those to blame for this damage.
He decided to demolish the Hall to raise money to plough into the Estate. The interior features - fireplaces, ceilings, staircases - were sold, and then the house itself was taken down brick by brick. Some of the beams were taken to Boston in Lincolnshire where they became part of a new house. All that remained was the kitchens - the core of the Tudor house - and the cellars beneath. He hoped one day to be able to make them part of a smaller house.	Demolition, 1947. Photo courtesy of National Monuments Record
'A finely carved fireplace ... One of a collection recently removed from Redgrave Hall, Diss, Norfolk' Picture courtesy of Jean Sheehan	The surviving Tudor core Photo courtesy of National Monuments Record

REDGRAVE PARK TODAY

In 1971 Redgrave Park was sold out of the Holt-Wilson family. This directly ended over 750 years of continuous manorial history and, indirectly, the ecological continuity of its wood pasture.

The new owners, Guy and Elizabeth Topham, carried out substantial changes to the way the Park was run, and set about turning it into a farm. The Old Stables was partly demolished to make into a suitable farmhouse. The walled gardens were demolished. Much of the Park was turned over to arable farmland, and many old trees were removed. A complex of large prefabricated sheds were set up in the centre of the Park, and used for storing agricultural surpluses. Belts of trees created by 'Capability' Brown on the north-eastern side were removed. Of the buildings erected by Brown, only the Roundhouse and the Kennels survive, and are subject to a Grade Two* preservation order by the Government to keep them for posterity. In the 1990's the walls either side of the Park gateway were rebuilt, and a monumental triangular plinth constructed as a new focal point at the junction with the road.

For over 750 years large areas of Redgrave Park had been wood pasture; it was part of a manorial system reaching back to Anglo-Saxon times; it had a building at its centre, symbolising the prestige of the Lord of the Manor and his household. This system continued through titles owned by the Bacon, Holt and Wilson families. The Park was the ideological centre of Redgrave Estate. But with the increasing impoverishment of the Estate in the late 19th century, and with the transition in Britain of economic power from rural, landed society to urban, industrial society, the Park and all it represented became increasingly irrelevant to the business of making a living in a modern capitalist economy. The letting of the Hall to tenants, the sale of the ancient manorial records in its Muniment Room about 1920, its demolition in 1947, the sale of the Park in 1970, and the fragmentation of the Estate can be seen as stages in the inevitable dissolution of manorial and squirearchial power.

The Park is now no longer the symbolic centre of a community of economic and social interest represented by the Estate. In keeping with most other farms in Britain, it may now be described as part of an agri-business, but one with a fascinating history. In November 2007 its free-range poultry units became the centre of an H5N1 avian influenza outbreak.

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View from the front, 1955 Photo courtesy of Derek Addy	By the 1960's the remains of the Hall and the Orangery were dangerous. The Orangery was demolished in the mid 1960's, and the last of the Hall went in 1970, along with the crumbling remains of the hospital and prisoner of war camp.

View of front door, 1966	View from west, 1966
A kitchen dresser, 1966	Fireplace & spit, 1966

	Map from the 1856 survey (Click image for enlarged 20kb version)
	Detail showing Roundhouse and Kennels (Click image for enlarged 13kb version)	Detail showing Hall, Stables and gardens (Click image for enlarged 20 kb version)

Agricultural depression after 1875 caused by imports of cheap food from the New World undermined the profitability of the Estate, on which the Hall depended for its income. Gradually the Redgrave Hall Estate slipped further into debt.