The Great Country Estates of Britain: Holkham Hall Revisited 1 of 5

Having studied and blogged about Holkham Hall previously, I was pleased to have the chance to visit it last year on our country house tour. Over the next two weeks I shall share some of the photos I took of Holkham. 

We arrived at the estate by the north gate, having stayed the night at Wells-next-the-sea (that was another story in itself, having arrived there to find no accommodation available we almost had to stay on a fishing boat over night!)

Above: The North Gate

Below: Detail of the wrought iron work in the gate

We drove through the deer park, parked the car and arrived at the visitors centre.

Above: Small side gate and gate houses.

Below: One of the lead rainheads. Peter was quite under-whelmed by the brown brick, expecting the hall to have been fashioned from large slabs of stone like Chatsworth or Castle Howard.

The visitors centre which housed a cafe and gift shop...

As it was a lovely day we decided to see the park and gardens first. We departed by a gate to the right in the above picture and strolled around the hall anticlockwise... 

We came across two large bronze lions...

and the Leicester monument...

before coming to a small weir on the estate lake. 

From here we looked back towards the hall to notice a terrace with a large fountain....

Looking over the balustrades of the raised terrace lawn we could see the remains of a neoclassical orangery...

Unfortunately it appears it was necessary to place signage requesting people not to 'jump the fence'...

It was quite an attractive wall actually...

with the occasional self sown beauty...

Here are some photos of the large fountain, which unfortunately was not in operation...

To the right of the orangery there was a small classical belvedere...

We then walked back towards the lake and on to the walled garden.

on the way we passed the old ice house...

and fields of free-ranging pigs...

To be honest the walled gardens were very disappointing. Having just seen the fabulous gardens at Houghton the day before, the gardens at Holkham were looking very much under-loved...

There were parts where they had started to tidy them up...

In the next post we will venture inside the hall to see the marble hall, statues, dining room and kitchen.