The documentary evidence

ROSE COLOURED MANSION

David Yaxely brings most of the available sources together in his book ‘A Portrait of Norfolk’, and provided an excellent starting point in re-assessing the sources he refers to and those that have come to light since, including the original water-colour by Josiah Boydell.

Of course, we have tantalising glimpses from the letters themselves, but nothing that provides anything of substance, other than the mention of a malting and fish ponds. We can of course extrapolate that malting on the site would require a specialist building or buildings, but whether it was part of the Hall complex or located nearby remains unknown at present.

One of the most revealing of sources is the ‘great rose-coloured mansion’ that appears in a portrait of Sir William Paston (1528– 1610). Whether this portrayal of Paston Hall is merely a token building or something that is actually representative of the Hall remains unclear.

Personally I believe it shouldn’t be dismissed altogether.

TILNEY-SPURDENS AND BOYDELL

By far the most helpful source we have in terms of describing the Hall complex, is the testimony of the Reverend John Tilney-Spurdens with his thoughts on the print which appears as a plate (left) within the Fenn Papers vol 5. This print was based on based on Josiah Boydell’s 1790 watercolour.

Tilney-Spurdens said that the print was ‘very

inadequate’ in terms of conveying an idea of the ruins when he visited them around the year 1796, six years after Boydell painted them. He describes a layout which would fit the typical plan of a Tudor Mansion or College and Anthony Norris (1711 - 1786) who compiled detailed , but unpublished, histories of the eastern hundreds of Norfolk, said that the hall;

much resembles that of a college and indeed, the marks of its ancient magnificence are still everywhere to visible

Tilney-Spurdens recalls that the ‘offices’ flanked the north and south sides of a courtyard, and we could interpret this as a series of buildings or rooms making up the service wings, within which, the day to day running of the mansion was carried out. He said that the mansion itself occupied the east of the courtyard (with the hall to the left and the kitchen on the right) and a large turreted gateway to the west.

Francis Blomefield (1705-1752) visited the site sometime during the 1730’s and stated that;

the buttery hatch, with the hall, is still standing, but the chamber over it, and the chapel, are in ruins.

The buttery hatch was a half door between the buttery / kitchen and the hall. The term ‘Hall’ often referred to the whole mansion even though it was a distinct room within the mansion.

So we can suppose that the hall had a chamber over it, and that there was a distinct chapel.

So taking all three sources into account, it seems we can be fairly certain that the Hall complex was the standard type based around a central courtyard where everything is expected to be.

JOSIAH BOYDELL

Boydell's watercolour sketch (below) presents us with a confusing picture. Although we can only see parts of the north and east sides of the complex, and it seems that there is very little we can pin down in terms of the previous descriptions of the ruins. I believe we need to think of in terms of where the scene was painted and what is missing.

In short, I believe Boydell is positioned in the south western corner of the the outer courtyard. The Barn and Church enables us to get a quick location fix, and there appears to be a well in front of the low wall.

Blomefield states that the Hall had two courts and that there was a well within the inner court, although the Boydell well is within what appears, logically, to be the outer court. On later maps, a well is indicated in this vicinity and is possibly still be seen today as a concrete slab in the grass in front of the new hall.

Tilney-Spurdens never mentions two courts – just ‘the court’, and we can be sure that he means the space in the foreground of the Boydell print because he also states that the building used as a blacksmiths’ shop was taken down to it’s string course and used as ‘a passage from the court to the farm buildings’. The farm buildings and barn are, of course, to the north.

The blacksmith's shop does appear to be a standalone building built into the short side side of a smaller courtyard, there also appears to be a break in the string course which is suggestive of a scar from a taller wall. Could this be the outer courtyard mentioned by Blomefield? If so the well would therefore be located within what he termed, the 'inner court'.

So now that we have established where the picture was painted, we can now assess what we should be seeing.

Clearly the large flint gateway to the west is missing because it’s to the left of the scene and ‘out of shot’. Yet we should have a clear view of the eastern range of the Hall. We can see ruins of a building or buildings that are possibly three stories high and we can be fairly sure that these have something to do with the Hall. But where is the Great Hall and kitchen, that both Blomefield and Spurden recall?

Tilney-Spurdens account may help us. He states that; ‘There is a turreted porch in the centre of the front’. It is not entirely clear what he is referring to; ‘the centre of the front’ of what?

I believe he is talking about the Hall, specifically what we see in the middle right of the Boydell watercolour (left).

There seems to be an entrance (the gap with the church visible) flanked by two small

polygonal buttresses. This gap is certainly in the ‘centre of the front’ of this ruin and there even seems

to be the suggestion of steps leading up to an entrance. Blomefield made reference to a staircase out of the hall;

Over a door of the great staircase, out of the Hall, the arms of Berry are carved.

I don’t think it is any coincidence that the Church can be seen within this gap. It is my opinion that Boydell has omitted the greater part of the Hall ruin in order to accommodate a view of the church – a large slice of artistic license.

With that in mind, the context of Tilney-Spurdens remarks take on a different significance. Rather than Boydell’s painting lacking because it does not show a better view of the Hall ruins, perhaps it is lacking because he has chosen to omit the greater part of the Mansion ruins. As Tilney-Spurdens said;

The view of Paston Hall on the title page of this volume conveys a very inadequate idea of the ruins of that ancient mansion as I remember them

As mentioned earlier, Boydell’s watercolour was redrawn and used as the title plate for the Fenn Papers Volume 5, and the ‘Account of the Plates’ when referring to the title plate states that;

This seems to corroborate the point that Tilney-Spurdens was making, so although nearly 60 years had passed since the visits of Norris and Blomefield, it seems likely that the ruins had not changed a great deal at the time of Boydell and Tilney-Spurdens. In this regard I think we can be fairly confident that Boydell has omitted the Great Hall, Kitchens and the first floor chambers.

The question is, what else is artistic license? It appears that the building with the chimney (the blacksmith's shop), the low wall and the well are represented faithfully, as these can possibly be seen on the enclosure map and the well plotted in later maps.

What about the apparent ‘turreted gateway’ (left) seen at the back of the picture? Could this be another case of artistic license by Boydell? Tilney-Spurdens only mentions one turreted gateway;

There were some traces of a turreted gateway on the west. It was a large building of flint with quoins of freestone, very irregular in its plan, with very spacious vaulted cellars.

The ‘Account of the Plates’ from the Fenn Papers Volume 5 states that the gateway seen in the print was used as a blacksmith’s shop, and so must be referring to the building with the chimney (below). It seems much more likely that a blacksmith would use an intact building rather than a ruin. We also know that Tilney-Spurdens referred to the building with the chimney as ‘the arched gate’ and that it was “a passage from the court to the farm buildings”.

This building was destroyed down to the string course and used as a pig sty during his visit, so we can safely assume that it was no longer used as a blacksmith’s shop by 1796.

So what is this mysterious 'turreted gateway'?

To me, it does not seem to sit comfortably in the scene. When trying to reconcile the Boydell ruins in 3D, this building appeared to be beyond the limits of the Hall and far too close to the barn.

Is it possible that there was a northern turreted gateway which has gone unmentioned in the contemporary accounts? Or it is possible that Boydell has sprinkled another large dusting of artistic license?

We now know that Boydell was painting with an aesthetic motivation rather than a faithful one. With this in mind, it is not inconceivable that he has actually painted the turreted gateway to the west (as it was too good a subject to leave out) and ‘shoe-horned ‘ it in at the top of his painting.

JOSIAH BOYDELL

Another assumption that needs to be examined is the influence of Lord George Anson who acquired the Paston estate sometime after the death of William Paston in 1732. The current understanding is that Lord Anson knocked down the ruins and built a new house which incorporated parts of a Tudor farmhouse. The earliest reference to this I can find is from ‘The Educated Pin’ by by Marjorie Mack in the following passage:

The whole estate of the Pastons was bought by Lord Anson on his return from the famous voyage round the world. He it was who demolished the ruins of the old fifteenth century hall and the Tudor farmhouse and built the original part of the new hall on the cellars probably of the latter

We must remember that at the time of the Anson acquisition, Paston Hall would have been part of the Paston estate which primarily included Oxnead Hall. William Paston moved the Paston seat to Oxnead in 1598. When talking about Oxnead, Blomefield states that:

After the death of this Earl [William Paston (1653/4-1732), who left his estates to pay his debts, this agreeable seat, with the park, gardens, &c. soon run into decay, the greatest part of the house was pulled down, the materials sold, only a part of it left for a farmer to inhabit, and was sold to the Right Honorable Lord Anson.

So with Oxnead came Paston, although at this stage, the old Paston Hall would presumably have been derelict since it’s abandonment in 1598.

At this point we need to put Paston into context with Lord Anson.

Lord Geroge Anson was a very rich man with an enormous property portfolio following his fame at fortune obtained from his successful naval career. The Anson family seat was at Shugborough in the heart of Stafforshire, where Anson funded the transformation of a medium sized country house there, to a magnificent Georgian Mansion between 1745 and 1748. In 1752, Lord Anson bought the great Palladian mansion at Moor Park and commissioned Capability Brown to landscape the gardens. Lord Anson died there in 1762.

We must think of the Ansons as the estate owners and the Paston estate belonging to a very large property portfolio which, in Norfolk, consisted of the following (as listed by Blomefield) when his son, Thomas, sold them between 1822 and 1824.

Oxnead Hall, the park then disparked, Paston Hall, manors, farms, advowsons etc. in Oxnead, Swanton Abbott, Buxton, Hevingham, Marsham, Lyng, Bassingham, Gresham, Paston, Mautby, Skeyton, Burgh-next-Aylsham, Lammas, Matlaske, Barningham, Bacton, Happisburgh, South Burlingham, Beighton, Runham, Southtown and Gorleston, Meyton, Reepham, West Beckham, Gresham, Aylmerton and Cromer, Oxnead paper mill, Buxton water mill, and Lyng water mill.

Lord Anson aquired Oxnead and Paston shortly before his death. He certainly could not of demolished the Hall as stated by Susannah Mack, because the ruins were still visible well after his death and I cannot see why Lord Anson would have any reason to demolish the already derelict Hall. Paston was small fry in the grand scheme of things.

As mentioned earlier, Blomefield tells us that Oxnead Hall was dismantled prior to the Anson acquisition in order to sell materials to clear debts, but Oxnead was enormous in comparison with Paston at this stage. It seems that Paston Hall may have escaped such demolition from both the Pastons and Lord George Anson. So it seems very likely that Lord George Anson had no material influence at Paston whatsoever, it was just one of many estates in a burgeoning property portfolio.

JOHN MACK AND THOMAS ANSON

The current understanding is that John Mack built the current Paston Hall after he acquired the estate in 1824. Former owner Steve Clark, who has conducted extensive restoration of the house has his own thoughts on the date of the Mack house.

In truth I have always understood the house to be circa 1824, everybody locally seem to think John Mack built the house. If I was to guess though I would have thought it was a little older rather than younger. To me it seems more Georgian than Victorian although I am sure houses were still built in Georgian style much later.

There is a lead roof above the porch to the front door (now at the rear of the house)and there are some hand and footprints scratched in the lead with Children’s names, they are dated 1836. I think it is entirely possible that John Mack didn’t actually build the house and that it already existed when he purchased in 1824. I have always thought it strange that Admiral Anson was meant to have built a house here sometime after his purchase in the 1760’s and then John Mack is meant to have built a new house in 1824. I think it is more likely that the house was built by Admiral Anson or his descendants sometime before 1812 and John Mack’s purchase.

Just to muddy the waters a little bit, when we had the roof redone the builder thought that the house had been substantially added too at some point. He felt that all the roof timbers were very old but that the main house timbers were much older than the timbers over the Kitchen and rear part of the house. Could it be that John Mack added to what was already there?

Although the cartography of the 1840 Tithe Map (below left) is less well defined than the 1812 Enclosure Map (below right), it does appear to be the same building with a stretched configuration aligned east-west. If it is the same building, then it must have been built before John Mack bought the estate in 1824.

The question remains, when was this house built and what went before it?

Again, the Rev. John Tilney-Spurdens gives us a starting point when he stated that the offices ‘flanked the two sides of a court, north and south’. To me, this suggests that north and south of the courtyard, there may have been Tudor buildings that were still being utilised, as borne out by the blacksmith’s shop in Boydell’s print.

It is entirely possible then, that the ‘Tudor Farmhouse’ as referred to by Susannah Mack, could be the southern service wing of the old hall. The wing may have evolved over the years as it’s role changed to an agricultural one, but could have remained a long building or string of buildings, perhaps some intact others ruinous.

We can see a direct parallel here with Oxnead as the current Oxnead Hall is a two-storey service wing which was left to the farmer as stated by Blomefield.2 So it is possible that the southern service wing of the old hall was still in lived in by the farmer or farm workers after the Pastons moved to Oxnead, and utilised as the ‘farmhouse’.

Crucially, the ‘account of the plates’ from the Fenn Papers Volume 5 states that; 'a modern farmhouse has been erected on another part of the site'. This volume was published before John Mack acquired the estate in 1824, and so it seems likely that the ‘modern farmhouse’ must have been built by Thomas Anson and improved on and not built by John Mack.

Based on the striking similarity of the houses drawn on both the Enclosure Map and the Tithe Map, it is very probable that they are the same building or range of buildings. If this is the case then we can conclude that the ‘modern farmhouse’ was built sometime between 1796 and 1812 and it seems likely that all traces of the old hall and associated buildings were removed during this period.

Susannah Mack’s theory that the ‘modern farmhouse’ incorporated the cellars from the Tudor service wing has been dismissed by Stephen Heyward (Historic Buildings Officer at Norfolk County Council).