Somerleyton Hall

Somerleyton Hall is a country house in the village of Somerleyton near Lowestoft, Suffolk, England. It is a Grade II* listed building and has a notable garden.

In 1240 a manor house was built on the site of Somerleyton Hall by Sir Peter Fitzosbert, whose daughter married into the Jernegan family. The male line of the Fitzosberts ended, and the Jernegans held the estate until 1604.

In 1604 John Wentworth bought the estate. He transformed Somerleyton Hall into a typical East Anglian Tudor-Jacobean mansion. It then passed to the Garney family.

The next owner was Admiral Sir Thomas Allin, a native of Lowestoft. He took part in the Battle of Lowestoft (1665) and the Battle of Solebay at Southwold in 1672. Eventually the male line of that family also died out.

In 1843 Somerleyton Hall and Park were bought by the prosperous entrepreneur and MP Samuel Morton Peto. For the next seven years he carried out extensive rebuilding, creating an Anglo-Italian architecture masterpiece. Paintings were specially commissioned for the house, and the gardens and grounds were completely redesigned. Peto employed Prince Albert's architect John Thomas; the clock tower houses a clock designed by Benjamin Vulliamy. Peto had garden features designed by William Andrews Nesfield and Joseph Paxton. Peto's son, Harold Peto, became a noted garden-designer, but it is not known whether he was influenced by the gardens of Somerlyton.

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