Houghton Hall - Houghton Hall gardens

Route: Houghton Hall

Area: Norfolk

Date of walk: 11th October 2017

Walkers: Andrew, Gilly, Nich and Patricia

Distance: 3.0 miles

Weather: Light cloud

On the first day of a short visit to Norfolk we decided to visit Houghton Hall & Gardens. The hall is an important Palladian mansion built in the 1720’s for Sir Robert Walpole, Great Britain’s first Prime Minster, and is surrounded by 1,000 acres of parkland adjacent to Sandringham House. Before visiting the hall we walked around the 5 acre Walled Garden, winner of the Christies and HHA ‘Garden of the Year Award’ in 2007. Even though it was late in the gardening season there was plenty of interest thanks to the strong structure and design within the garden, and the planting which has clearly been laid out to perform throughout the gardening year

Our visit coincided with ‘Earth Sky’, a major exhibition of the works of Turner Prize-winning British Landscape artist, Richard Long, and we spent some time wandering around the parkland seeking out the installations

Lastly we visited the hall itself. The State Rooms were sumptuously decorated by William Kent, with painted ceilings and suites of carved and gilded furniture and were designed to impress Sir Robert Walpole’s distinguished guests – they certainly impressed us

It was a superb visit and and I hope to return in the future to explore the other parts of the garden which we missed during the course of our visit. I’ve not included a route map as this would be pointless in the circumstances, although the map link does show the location of Houghton Hall

Click on the icon below for a location map