The Stately Homes of Norfolk - Kirstead Hall

in this episode of the stately homes of Norfolk I've come just nine miles from our city center to a quiet site that was 900 years ago part of the outlying lands of the abbey of Barry sand Edmonds but in 1536 the Reformation took place Henry the Eighth grabbed the lands and the house parts of which are incorporated into the present building today here at Kerr stirred Hall [Music] this fine grade 1 listed Elizabethan manor house began in 1570 the brickwork has the attractive blue dye for decoration and it has a pin tiled roof and these stepped Flemish gable ends the house and the barns are all grade 1 listed and to have this number of listed buildings within such a small area is quite rare through the centuries there be numerous owners for the past 35 years it's been home to Dermot and Judy Murphy various families owned the property the Karason is the Canterbury's but nobody of any great importance really so the house largely sort of fell into decay I think over the the centuries and then the farm next door bought it they had it around the turn of the century but they never really lived in it properly and in fact the hall in the house was used to store their corn and our bedroom on the first floor was used for the hair and there were pigeons flapping around and the previous owner was very good he was a historian called Lionel Edwards and he bought the place in 1960 and basically started to do it up but in the end his wife got fed up and she said either we both go or I go sadly both went the property we think was built by Sir Thomas godself one of his stewards who was busy lining his pockets as well one of Henry's men and this is one of several that the family collected we know that he was painted by Holbein and that he was very much a sort of Fringe courtier I think unprincipled we're told because none of the family actually had their heads chopped off and so that's what we're we know we were shelling this house and they brought us through the beautiful Norfolk lanes and it was snowing and we looked at Kerr stood and there it was standing there and all the snow this sort of house we don't we didn't want to be a museum or a sort of pastiche or preserve something like that we wanted to be a lived in the house for our family really and friends we actually don't go in the house to home the house and us is really the way to look at it and we must I think because there was a local make make sure that people can enjoy it too and that that's one of the reasons actually we opened there has a true invitation to view really so that other people could see it when we first of all came I couldn't work out what these target talking bull's eyes were I thought they were children that we put them you know four little guns with suckers on yet but when the Norfolk Archaeological Society came they've got really quite excited about them and they said they are a popular pet marks we'd never heard this neck were a popular pet apparently comes from the Greek meaning good luck and it really is to ward off the evil spirits keep them out of the house and to let the good spirits come into the house and in fact there's just a slight mark of an M for Mary for our lady so you know the Virgin Mary would also keep the housing so it was like a blessing on the porch right absolutely very much like hidden mittens that you get in chimneys and and also interestingly here in the portray these benches there's some history behind which of their original benches the pages were sucked here waiting for their master mistress to come home because the drive would have been there it would be come straight down it was what Brandt and then they would have waited on them hand foot and finger when they came do come in thank you very much so Judy tell me about this room that we're in here oh well this is the Great Hall Chris and we do know that all of this room was completely paneled all the way around lovely lovely paneling but the interesting feature was it had the most wonderful fireplace which was here and we know that the Osbourne's the Lord Canterbury is firmly who lived in this house they owned this home their own seething Hall but they also earned great watching on home that particular fireplace and all the paneling was taken to great watching them and we understand that the Bernard Matthews turkeys really enjoyed the puddling when they lived in the house but you'll see that mr. Berta Matthews relate mr. Bernard Matthews used to sit in front of our fireplace saying how beautifully histories where Chris another thing we show here are these albums to visitors if they want to actually look at them and what they are they're about a hundred years old now and they represent the family a snapshot of a firmly going back over two or three generations to the first world war so pictures of Ypres and telegrams and letters which people did in those kept kept their telegrams and letters and then sort of social stuff as well people getting married this is all and extended family as well so basically this is a several generations of family and it's all sort of here together in one sort of roof this actually was the secondary parlor the primary parlor was the room above now this is the room of course that Edward Siegel use as his first studio and in the books it says that his mother made muslin curtains for the windows and CEO himself whitewash the walls one of the lovely features is this the windows yes the angle in which they all well that that's the settlement you see when it was new this because we're on very heavy clay and the house has no foundations whatsoever the house is a new built settled and it's a very good indication of how good our dinner parties are because when our dinner parties are really good they become vertical yes whether we're lying horizontal I don't know and and when you when you came in here and discovered this was Segoe studio were you studiously searching for absolutely we've searched underneath the sofas in the arms with everywhere but he didn't leave one picture behind the parents of Edward C ago lived in the village and when they finally agreed their son could become an artist because it was a great big step they thought our son being an artist they've just wasn't there a cup of scene at all so they had the room here and curiously enough the light must have been very bad because he's actually we face south-southwest it wouldn't have been a lot of good for him there are three tough cuts in the vicinity locally there's one here and there's one in Brook itself in dovecot closed and there's another one on the way to be wrapped and coming out of the village which has been converted and the reason that they were all sited close to one another is that when the buildings were full of doves they used to strip all the fields so the idea was that everyone got a sort of even stripping if you like of their crops the Dove cots are situated on the corner of a field and you can make out the outline of one here this building here we think used to stand on used to have a wooden section where the princes may have housed the wooden structure and you can see the different brickwork the size and the color and everything else right inside Chris thank you so here we are the roof has been replaced and you can clearly see now that the cue pillar at the top is actually made of fiberglass originally Chris we think there would have been 469 pigeon holes here and they're beautifully built you could looking over here as one can see those doves actually would have come out of the little nesting boxes and perched on these little ledges all the way around they've since been shored up with these pieces of wood and metal work to go through them basically to hold the structure together this hexagon in the middle is interesting and is unusual because originally there would have been a ladder and a wheel on the bottom of the ladder which went around here and then it would have been a post and two spars and so the person would have climbed up the ladder and then got the young swabs out of the out of the nesting boxes and it's those that were used for eating the idea of these DAF cuts goes back the Chinese had them the Egyptians had them and the Romans imported them into this country as well they're all over France and so as you probably know and people who were important had them so monasteries lords of the manor that sort of thing [Music] you always think you're preserving a house like this for future generations we'll all be dead and gone but the house will just go on and on and on and I think where the house is large or small if you're looking after it you're visiting you're just a tenant in time really once you were just a conservation person [Music] Gerst at home very much a family home as it was 440 years ago there's three generations of the Murphy family live here and as Dermot and Judy of told us they're very much looking after it for the next generation well it's been a wonderful enjoyable day here and I'm fairly confident that this wonderful manor house will be with us for many centuries to come [Music] you

Channel: Chris Bailey Presents

Views: 26,098

Rating: 4.8997493 out of 5

Keywords: Norfolk, Stately Homes, Kirstead

Id: JvD4KokmeZ4

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 30 2019