Springfield near, Clemsford, Dec. 6.Mr. UrbanMr. Urban,
WILLWill you allow me to lay before your readers some particulars relating to
Oxnead Hall in Norfolk, formerly the seat of the Pastons, Earls of Yarmouth.
It was in the year 1809 that I made a
drawing of the Old Hall as it stood
before it was taken down. This was published in Mr. Britton's Architectural
Antiquities; but I have since discovered that, instead
of one, the original roof had two stories of garrets, like those of Irmingland, Heydon, Barningham Halls in
Norfolk, and Wakehurst in Sussex.
I likewise inclose a sketch of the Fountain formerly at Oxnead, which had for more than half a century been half
concealed among the rubbish in Blickling
Park; it was lately restored, and placed in the flower-garden
adjoining to Blickling Hall.
Oxnead Hall was built by Clement Paston, the fourth son of Sir William Paston, knight, in the reign
of Queen Elizabeth; and it continued
the principal seat of that family, whose name has been rendered so
celebrated by the Correspondence of its early members, edited by Sir John Fenn.
The original building is described in the Ground-plan. The portion marked L
was erected by the first Earl of
Yarmouth to receive King Charles
II and his attendants, who visited Oxnead in 1676; it was a
lofty building, with sash-windows, called the Banquetting-room. Underneath
this was a vaulted apartment, which was called the Frisketting room,
probably from the Italian “frescati,” a cool grotto.
William Paston, the second Earl of
Yarmouth, and last of his family, died in 1732, leaving his
estates to be sold for the payment of his debts. They were purchased by the
celebrated Lord Anson, (it is stated by Mr. Dawson Turner in his recent
History of Caister,) “after his return from his voyage round the world.”
This was in 1744. The greater part of this
magnificent mansion was shortly after taken down. Oxnead Hall is now in the possession of Sir
Edward Hardinge Stracey, Bart. It was for many years occupied by my late
uncle, John Repton, esq. who died in 1809.
The only remains of this formerly magnificent
mansion are the offices at the east end, and the barn, with three
noble stacks of chimnies; each stack contained four shafts, of which only
the bases remain, but, from a single brick with a cross on the edge, which I
discoverer a few years ago, the chimney shafts I imagine to have been
formerly highly enriched. It may be worth while to mention that the windows
of Oxnead Hall are only thirteen inches
wide (i. e. the glass between the munnions), although the munnions
themselves are at least five inches broad. Other old mansions in Norfolk of the same date have the glass
casements fifteen or sixteen inches wide, and, when succeeded by panes of
plate glass, are not disagreeable to their modern inhabitants. But in the
mansions of the end of Elizabeth's or beginning of James the First's reign,
the casements exceed seventeen or eighteen inches wide, as at Blickling,
Longleat, &c.