Visit to Ickworth House, Park and Garden

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Visit to Ickworth House, Park and Garden



Ickworth Estate is one of the nearest National Trust properties for John & Mary, and they visit there regularly.



They took us to Ickworth on 19 June. As following the descendent path, I showed my parents the size of Ickworth Estate, pointing at the woodland shown beyond. They were amazed with the sizeable parkland. John explained to me that there used to be the village of Ickworth on the Ickworth Park, but the villagers were sent to Horringer.



John & Mary told us that St Mary Church, was built for the Hervey family, has now been refurbished and opened to the public. As well as original documents and fragments of valuable porcelain, there were several artworks and ornaments restored such as murals or sculpture of golden dove.



The descending path led us to the walled garden by the canal lake. In line with restoring Victorian vegetable garden, old roses were planted along the wall. Quite a few types of vegetables and fruits were grown. We enjoyed seeing the vegetable garden with different types of dolls which were designed by the local school children.



John & Mary, again, treated the lunch to us at Ickworth, and told us all of the interesting stories of the descendants of the Hervey family, which they have heard by word of mouth or from the local newspapers.



The last time we looked round the house was more than 10 years ago. The recent building work has made it more accessible to a larger number of rooms with a wealth of treasures collected by the Hervey family. It was interesting to see the difference, e.g. quality of heating equipment and amenities between the higher and lower ranked servants in the basement.

We continued looking round the drawing room, dining room and library. etc., in the ground floor, and saw a number of outstanding portraits and landscape paintings by Gainsborough, Hogarth, Reynolds, Titian and Velazquez, collections of beautiful furniture and Italian porcelain in those rooms. I marvelled at the Naples Room which was painted and decorated in the Naples style. There was a marble table embellished with different types of marble stones.

The recent refurbishment work has allowed to show an even larger Georgian silver collections including fish-shaped cases, many decorative fans in the principal rooms upstairs.



Afterwards, John & Mary took us to Stumpery Walk in the Italian Garden. The Hervey family collected a large bunch of firewood during the World War II to retain the fire for the house. After the war, they were abandoned in their estate. The head gardener replanted those trunks in the shady spots. They have become interesting objects among the shady plants and tree ferns, as well as helping their growth and maintaining the wildlife habitats.

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