Culford Park in Culford

Culford

Culford is a small village about north of Bury St Edmunds in the English county of Suffolk. The villageis based around a straight road called "The Street" and there are also some smaller residential areas in Culford, like Benyon gardens, a complex of small lanes...

, Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, is a country house that is the former seat of the Bacon

Bacon Baronets

There have been three Baronetcies created for members of the Bacon family, all in the Baronetage of England. As of 2008, one creation is extinct and two of the creations are extant. The extant titles have been merged since 1755...

, Cornwallis

Earl Cornwallis

Earl Cornwallis was a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1753 for Charles Cornwallis, 5th Baron Cornwallis. The second Earl was created Marquess Cornwallis but this title became extinct in 1823, while the earldom and its subsidiary titles became extinct in 1852...

 and Cadogan

Earl Cadogan

Earl Cadogan is a title that has been created twice in the Peerage of Great Britain. The Cadogan family descends from Major William Cadogan, a cavalry officer in Oliver Cromwell's army. His son Henry Cadogan was a barrister in Dublin. His eldest son William Cadogan was a noted soldier, politician...

 families, and now it is the home of Culford School

Culford School

Culford School is a coeducational HMC and IAPS public school for pupils age 3–18. Founded in 1881, it is situated in Culford, four miles north of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England.-History:...

.

History of the Park

From at least 1429 the Coote family had lived at Culford and in 1524 Christopher Coote was lord of the manor. In 1540 Culford was granted by the Crown to the Bacon family and in 1591 Sir Nicholas Bacon built a red-brick hall on the same site as the present house. The estate passed to the Cornwallis family in 1660 and during the middle of the C18 'T Wright' (possibly Thomas Wright (1711(86), the nationally renowned landscape gardener) was employed. Wright produced a map of the park dated 1742 which shows a formal landscape of avenues, rides and vistas, through geometrically shaped blocks of woodland. Between 1790 and 1796 Samuel Wyatt was commissioned to remodel the house for the first Marquis Cornwallis and in 1791 Humphry Repton (1752(1818) provided advice on landscaping the park, preparing a Red Book in 1792 (Williamson 1993). The estate remained in the Cornwallis family until the second Marquis died in 1823, by which time it had been greatly extended. Culford was sold the following year to Richard Benyon de Beauvoir and an estate map of 1834 shows the major expansion of the designed landscape on all boundaries. From c 1839 the Rev Edward Benyon continued to embellish the estate. In 1889 the estate was sold again, this time to the fifth Earl Cadogan who commissioned the architect William Young to completely remodel the house in the Italian style. New stables
were built, the gardens were altered and considerable additions made to the village.

Following the death of the sixth Earl in 1933 the estate was sold.The core of the park, together with the house, became the home of Culford School

Culford School

Culford School is a coeducational HMC and IAPS public school for pupils age 3–18. Founded in 1881, it is situated in Culford, four miles north of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England.-History:...

(bought 1935) in whose hands it remain today.

External links

• Culford School website