There’s a wall all the way around, with towers at intervals, and a wide open garden area as you enter. A stream runs along one side; well, when I say stream, I’m not sure that it goes anywhere, but it’s like a stream, and there a beautiful lily-pads in flower over towards a little platform. Across it at one point is a bridge which has a pulley on it, so that part of it can be raised to allow a small boat through. Small, as in a rowboat.
In front of the Hall is the parterre garden. I guessed this meant something along the lines of ‘by
earth’ but in fact the proper translation is on the ground, which seems just a little bit obvious for a garden. Wikipedia tells us that a “parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all. French parterres were elaborated out of 16th-century knot gardens.” The parterre at Oxburgh is elaborate and colourful - and it does have flowers, and a knot shape.Beyond this is the Hall itself, surrounded by a moat, which may have only arrived in the 19th century as there was a photograph inside the building of men working on it. The building (which was begun in 1482) itself has been added to and altered but in spite of its inconsistencies of design is strong in its features. There’s a bridge over the moat and plenty of fish in the water. We couldn’t tell what kind they were, except that they were black, or dark in colour, and about 6-8 inches long. Long iridescent dragonflies hovered over the water.
Apparently the house was originally U-shaped, but the fourth side was filled in by the industrious Victorian, and there is now a courtyard in the centre. The Victorians also added the Flemish-style windows and the terracotta chimneys.
While the house is interesting to walk around in, its major claim to fame is that it has a priest’s hole. This was a hiding place for Catholic priests in the time when they were being hunted down. The hole is in an interesting place. One of the rooms above the main archway was slept in by King Henry VII. The privy (it has a more particular name which I’ve forgot) was up a short flight of steps. Behind this was the trap to flush out the doings; in the troubled times, this trap didn’t flush anything out but hid the priest who had a small ‘room’ beneath. His access was in fact through the trap, and he would have had to have been a fairly skinny fellow to get through it.
Above the King’s room was the Queen’s, reached by a stone spiral staircase. And further up the staircase again is access to the tower overlooking the roof. There’s more access to something above that again, but it was closed to us yesterday.
Unless you have a good idea of period furniture and style it’s hard to tell what was original in the house and what has been added. The Victorians seemed to have collected a great deal of carved wood, sometimes adding it to existing furniture. Only someone with particular knowledge would know what belonged to what.
Yesterday there was an art exhibition on at the house as well. Art in the sense of ‘someone’s idea of art.’ It consisted of copy after copy of various ‘common’ items such as books, hotties, tanks and airplanes (!) all made in white porcelain. The artist had a philosophical reason for making all this stuff - these sorts of artists always do - but in fact it wasn’t particularly exciting, and it detracted considerably from the genuine art and furniture and fittings in the house. Fortunately the stuff was only in two rooms, otherwise it would have been quite irritating. One of the volunteer guides expressed some considerable disdain for it, as well he might.
