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Elveden Hall


Elveden Hall is a large stately home on the Elveden Estate in Elveden, Suffolk, England. The seat of the Earls of Iveagh, it is a Grade II* listed building. It is located centrally to the village and is close to the A11 and the Parish Church.

The date of the original house's construction is unknown but the estate is known to have been anciently appropriated by Bury St Edmunds Abbey. After the dissolution of the monasteries it was given by Henry VIII to the Duke of Norfolk. It subsequently passed through the ownerships of the Crisp and Tyrell families. The Georgian house at the core of the present house is thought to have been built c. 1760. In 1768 the estate was purchased by Admiral Keppel. He died without issue in 1796 and it passed to his nephew, the Earl of Albemarle, who sold it to MP William Newton in 1813.

In 1849, the Maharajah Duleep Singh, ruler of the Sikh Empire and owner of the famous Koh-i-noor diamond was exiled to England, having been removed from his kingdom by the British East India Company.

The Maharajah purchased the 17,000-acre (69 km2) Elveden Estate in 1863 and set about rebuilding the country house and dressing it in an Italian style. However, he redesigned the interior to resemble the Mughal palaces that he had been accustomed to in his childhood. He also augmented the building with an aviary where exotic birds such as golden pheasant, Icelandic gyrfalcons, parrots, peafowl and buzzards were kept. His architect was John Norton, the Gothic revival specialist who also redesigned Tyntesfield.


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