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Garden Name: Blickling Estate
Last Modified: 19/01/2011
Garden ID: 0257

pic: 0257_BlicklingHall.jpg

Owner: National Trust
Address:
Aylsham
Norwich

Postcode: NR11 6NF
County: Norfolk

tel: 01263-738030
fax: 01263 731660
website: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-blickling-estate.htm
email: blickling {at} nationaltrust.org.uk

Features: 
Magnificent Jacobean house with gardens and park; Famed for its long gallery, fine tapestries, paintings and rare books; A Garden for all seasons; Excellent wedding and conference venue; Reputedly home to the headless ghost of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second queen.
RAF Museum in Harness Room. Croquet available. Coarse fishing on lake July - Feb, day tickets available.

English Heritage Grade:
II*

Opening Times:
Garden:
1st Jan - 18th Feb; Thurs - Sun; 11am - 4pm
19th Feb - 30th Oct; daily; 10am - 5.30pm
2nd Nov - 31st Dec; Wed - Sun; 11am - 4pm
Park: All year, dawn to dusk, Sun - Sat
Cycle hire available daily.
Closed 25th - 26th Dec. Last admission 30mins before closing

Best Times of Year to Visit: 


To see: 


National Collection: 


National Garden Scheme days: No
Comments: 

Parties / Coaches: Yes 
Comments: 

Viewing by Appointment: Yes
Comments: Groups must book with s.a.e. to Property Office. 

House Open for Viewing: Yes
Comments: 19th Feb - 24th Jul; Wed - Sun; 11am - 5pm
25th Jul - 11th Sept; Wed - Mon; 11am - 5pm
14th Sep - 30th Oct, Wed - Sun; 11am - 5pm
House also open Monday 11th, 18th, 25th April, plus 2nd and 30th May. Limited timed tours available on all other Mondays and Tuesdays 19 February to 30 October (spaces limited).

Admission Prices:
Gift Aid Admission (Standard Admission prices in brackets)
Hall and garden: adult £10.75 (£9.75), child £5.25 (£4.75), family £29 (£26.10), family (1 adult and 3 children) £21 (£19).
Garden only: adult £7.25 (£6.50), child £3.65 (£3.30), family £21.50 (£19.50), family (1 adult and 3 children) £14.70 (£13.30).
Free access to South Front, shop, restaurant, plant centre, second-hand bookshop, art exhibitions. Coarse fishing permits available at lakeside

Parking: Yes
Lavatories: Yes
Disabled Access: Yes
Shop: Yes
Plants for Sale: Yes
Lunches: Yes
Teas: Yes
Refreshments: Yes
Picnics: Yes
Dogs allowed: Yes
Only on Lead: Yes
Events: No

Other Facilities:
Coarse fishing in lake; permits from Warden, tel. 01263 734181. Dogs on lead in park only. Full events programme.


Designer: 
Description of Garden:
A spectacular and beautiful Jacobean house entices you to visit an equally spectacular and beautiful garden beyond. Incorporating important elements created by the leading garden designers over the past three centuries, this is a garden that includes a large and wonderfully planted parterre with a delightful colour scheme created by one of the leading lights in the garden design sphere before WWII. Fantastic topiary, including the famous grand pianos, complements this sublimely, and the dry moat contains plants seldom found in this part of the world including buddleia, auriculata, ceanothus and camellia. 

But this is just the hors d'oeuvre, and the main course in the form of the parkland, is arrived at after leaving the parterre when you find yourself in rolling parkland with fine stands of oak, beech and chestnut. Its main feature is the lake with huge Oriental plane trees and a venerable Turkey Oak nearby. In Spring the foot of each of these is covered in bulbs and wild flowers.


History: 
The house was built by Sir Henry Hobart, but little remains of his early 17th century garden. His great grandson, the 1st Earl of Buckinghamshire redesigned the garden in the early 18th century and the central axis of the garden and grand vista looking up to the Doric Temple is still there. His son, the 2nd Earl, living at the height of the Landscape Movement, concentrated on creating a park with rolling pasture, the great lake and the Orangery, probably designed by Wyatt and built in 1782. It is known that Humphry Repton suggested some of these improvements and Repton's son, John, was employed after 1823, working on garden furniture and other features. In the 1860s the 8th Marquis Lothian created the present grid pattern for the formal areas of the garden employing, Markham Nesfield, the son of William Andrews Nesfield who did much work at Kew, to excavate the 2-acre parterre, although Lady Lothian dictated its interior planting. The present-day planting there was carried out by Norah Lindsay in the years between the World Wars and has been carried forward by the national Trust. She also designed the less flamboyant Secret Garden.

Local Inns: 
Buckinghamshire Arms, Blickling
Walpole Arms, Itteringham

Accomodation: 
Shrublands Farm, Northrepps, S. of Cromer

Restaurants: 
The Greens, Aylsham

Village/Town/Sightseeing: