Kirstead Hall

Kirstead Hall is a fine and beautiful mellow red-brick Grade I Tudor hall, begun in 1540 of E-shaped plan with pin tile roof and stepped Flemish gable ends.

There is brickwork with attractive blue diaper decoration, 18th-century graffiti on the leaded lights, and the porch features anti-witchcraft symbols. The gardens are partly walled with an important Grade II* octagonal dovecote in the grounds. The drawing room was the first studio of the artist Edward Seago and the honeysuckle over the porch was there in his time. Essentially still a family home, exuding warmth and hospitality, the owners’ youngest daughter and her family lived on the top floor until recently.

A family ancestress was Mary Christian, the genteel sister of the mutineer Fletcher, who has an interesting family history and also owned the Palgrave Murphy Shipping Company, which included a line between Great Yarmouth and Dublin.

Visitors can see three letters from Agatha Christie to the owner’s late aunt when she was a nun, a note from Snaffles the artist, a letter with a sketch by Field Marshall Alexander, and unusual examples of miniature honeymoon underwear circa 1926. Albums from the 1900s include the signature of King Manuel II, the last King of Portugal. The funeral service sheets of Field Marshal Alexander, The Lord Wilson and Major General Dudley Johnson VC can also be viewed.

Early albums have photos of World War I battlefields and include one of General French. A scrapbook of Country Life photos and cuttings from the 1930s can be perused. Albums illustrating social history and fashion from the 1900s include some really ugly ancestors.

The famous Talbot House, Toc H, was founded under the aegis of the owner’s great uncle Edward van Cutsem, Town Major of Poperingue in Belgium during World War I, as he was able to obtain materials to rebuild the shattered house. The executions of soldiers shot at dawn was a dreadful duty that went to his heart. He made the process more humane and his accounts of this can be read.

The owner’s uncle helped to organise the signing of the German surrender in 1945. His memoir of the occasion can be read, and he was also present at Himmler’s suicide.

Dermot’s father was the sole survivor when his tank took a direct hit during the Burma Campaign. His account can be read, “I was lying on the ground surrounded by the debris of a shattered tank…”