NHER 56269 (Designed Landscape record) - Wood Hall Park

Wood Hall (NHER 4468) is shown on Faden’s map, surveyed in 1794, but no park is attached. The earliest sign of a park is in Humphrey Repton’s ‘Red Book’ of proposed improvements from 1807. It seems likely that the park originated about this time. The proposed map encloses some outbuildings with a circle of trees which also encloses an oval kitchen garden. This circular tree plantation lies west of the Hall. There are a few tree plantations in the north of the park, and a tree belt along the south-east corner of the park. The main driveway to the Hall comes from a western road and runs up north-east and around the circular tree plantation. Comparing this proposal to the 1841 Tithe Award Map and the 1906 Ordnance Survey map, it appears that the majority of Repton’s plan was implemented.
The 1841 Tithe Award map shows that the west side of the park is given over to arable use and the east side is pasture. The arable fields would have been almost completely screened from view of the Hall as it is located east of the park within the pasture fields. It is likely that the pasture fields were in fact the parkland and so all grassed. A small area around the Hall is labelled as a garden.
The 1906 Ordnance Survey map shows a smaller park, but in reality it is merely the areas which were called pasture on the 1841 Tithe Award map, and the arable land has been omitted from the boundaries of the park. The area around the Hall is much more densely treed, with areas of lawn immediately north and south of the Hall with a few standing trees.
There is a stable block north-west of the Hall. South of the stables is an orchard. The kitchen garden is south-west of Hall, and is almost completely oval in shape. Today the kitchen garden is mostly grassed and contains a tennis court. The gardens and pleasure grounds of the Hall lie to the east of it. It is now a park of c.40 hectares.
See (S1-4).
C. Hurst (UEA), 21 November 2011.