Earlham Hall

Earlham Hall is a country house in Norfolk, England. It is located just to the west of the city of Norwich, on Earlham Road, on the outskirts of the village of Earlham. For generations it was the home of the Gurney family. The Gurneys were known as bankers and social activists; prison reformer Elizabeth Fry grew up at Earlham Hall. When the University of East Anglia was founded in 1963, the building became its administrative centre, and it now serves as the law school.

Earlham Hall was built in 1642 by Robert Houghton. By the eighteenth century it was in the ownership of the Bacon family; Edward Bacon M.P. built a "handsome, long, and lofty" dining room. He died in 1786 and ownership descended to a Mr Bacon Frank of Campsall in Yorkshire. At this juncture the house was rented to the Gurney family, an arrangement which persisted for well over a century, "perhaps one of the oldest tenancies known for a mansion of the size, though very frequent In the case of farmhouses".

The Gurneys were influential and wealthy Quakers who established the bank bearing their name in 1770. (The family became sufficiently well known to be mentioned in Gilbert and Sullivan's 1875 comic opera Trial by Jury: a character describes his accumulation of wealth until "at length I became as rich as the Gurneys". Gurney's Bank merged into Barclays in 1896.)

Earlham Hall was the home of John Gurney (1749-1809) and his wife Catherine Bell (1755–1794). They had 13 children, including the bankers Samuel Gurney and Daniel Gurney, the social reformers Elizabeth Fry and Joseph John Gurney, and Louisa Hoare, the writer on education. Another sister, Hannah, married Sir Fowell Buxton, MP, brewer, and abolitionist.

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