Felbrigg Hall Gardens, Norfolk National Trust

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Felbrigg Hall Gardens, Norfolk (National Trust)

Felbrigg Hall Gardens and Estate offers over 500 acres of woodland, a beautiful walled garden and a Victorian pleasure ground.



The walled garden bursts with flowers, herbs and fruit in the summer, a beautiful mosaic of colour and scent. There is an octagonal dovecot, which still supplies birds for meat as it did when it was built in the 18th century. Visiting again when the seasons change offers a different experience. Pears and apples ripen on the trees into autumn, as they would have done when people needed food that would last into the long winters.



Between the house and the walled garden, the West Garden is in the style of a Victorian pleasure ground. It offers dramatic contrast between light and shade, with dark areas of exotic rhododendrons, camellia and large North American specimen trees next to open expanses of grassed lawn. The giant trees offer welcome shelter from the rain and shade in the summer.
As you can reliably expect from a National Trust property there is a café with excellent coffee and cake provision, and hot lunches. The courtyard also offers a gift shop and a second-hand bookshop.



From the courtyard, you can walk around the front of the 17th-century house and take in the views of rolling hills, woodland and fields. Sheep bleat in the distance. You take an easy 2.5-mile circular walk through the fields of bleating sheep to take in the 14th-century Felbrigg church, a lake and an ice house. It is also possible to visit inside the 17th-century house.



When I visited, the café, shop, bookshop and footpaths through the estate could be accessed without paying an entrance fee, although there is a parking charge for non-members.

The hall and gardens are accessed from the B1436, just off the A418, just two miles from Cromer.



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