Suffolk’s Historic Gardens and Parks Inventory

A record of Suffolk's park and garden heritage

The Inventory is a freely available online resource dedicated to recording and understanding Suffolk’s rich and varied historic gardens, parks and designed landscapes.

Archives, Conservation, Garden History, Landscape History, Park History

All Styles

All Periods

Suffolk

All Periods

Recording and Documenting

Suffolk’s Historic Parks & Gardens Inventory documents gardens, parks, pleasure grounds and other planned green spaces, exploring how they developed, who created them, and how they have changed through time.

Often uncovering new evidence, each site record is highly illustrated helping users to understand how gardens and parks once looked and how surviving features fit into their historic context. It’s aim is to provide an historic record for current and future generations.

You can view the Suffolk’s Historic Parks & Gardens Inventory here: https://suffolkhistoricgardensandparks.co.uk/

Suffolk’s Inventory is initially based on over twenty years of research by Tina Ranft that began when she joined Suffolk Gardens Trust Walled Gardens Recording Group and found how little easily accessible information was available to help explain the historic development of the gardens visited. It is hoped it will become a collaborative effort that houses additional information and site reports summitted by other researchers and members of the public.

Waveney Hill, Oulton Broad. Taken from 1909 sales particulars. (Private Collection)

A Broad Approach

Suffolk’s Inventory complements Historic England’s Register of Parks and Gardens and the Suffolk Historic Environment Record by looking beyond the nationally designated sites with many sites never formally recorded before.

It includes houses and landscapes across society: from grand aristocratic mansions and the estates of powerful Suffolk landowners, to the parks and gardens of the gentry, professionals, businessmen and larger rectory gardens created for the clergy. This broader approach reveals a much richer and more representative picture of Suffolk’s historic landscape than designation alone can provide.

Lithograph by Henry Davy of Sternfield Rectory, now Sternfield House, in 1858.

A Wide Audience

Suffolk’s Inventory is free to access and is intended for a wide audience.

Suffolk’s Inventory is free to access and is intended for a wide audience. Professional bodies, planning authorities, conservation specialists and property owners can use it as a research and reference tool, particularly when managing change or assessing significance. At the same time it is designed to be accessible to local residents, historians, students and even curious walkers who want to learn more about the landscapes they encounter every day.

The Inventory encourages greater awareness, appreciation and understanding of the county’s gardens and parks, helping to ensure they are recognised as an important part of Suffolk’s heritage.

Design for an extension to Theberton Hall, garden wall and rotundas. In the event the garden enclosing wall was never constructed. (Taken from 1872/3 sales particulars in the possession of the current owners)

Worlingham Hall at the beginning of the nineteenth century. (From Gedges, Town & Country Ladies’ own Memorandum Book, c. 1809)

Suffolk’s Historic Gardens and Parks Inventory

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Mavis Batey

After her career as a World War II codebreaker, Mavis went on to be at the forefront of the movement to protect historic designed landscapes, helping to ensure the survival of many important gardens for the future.