At the end of a long Norfolk avenue, Blickling Hall rises, a long red-brick façade framed by turrets and crowned with gables: one of the finest Jacobean houses in England. Built in the early seventeenth century, it stands on lands linked to the Boleyn family — and tradition has Anne, the beheaded queen, born here.
On the Boleyn lands
Before the present house, Blickling belonged to the Boleyns: it was here, according to a stubborn (though unproven) tradition, that Anne Boleyn is said to have been born around 1501, before the family settled at Hever, in Kent. The link with the future queen, mother of Elizabeth I, has nourished the place's legend. In the early seventeenth century the estate passed to Sir Henry Hobart, a rich lawyer, who had the old manor razed and built, between 1616 and 1627, the house one sees today.
A Jacobean masterpiece
Blickling Hall belongs to the generation immediately following the Elizabethan Renaissance: the Jacobean style, named after King James I. In it are found the symmetry and the brick of the prodigy houses, but with a more exuberant decoration: a long gallery with a plaster ceiling adorned with emblems, a carved staircase, a famous library. The house embodies the moment when English architecture, emerging from the Tudor Renaissance, is about to tip, with Inigo Jones, into the classical age. Blickling keeps all the charm of that transition: still bristling with turrets in the old fashion, but already ordered with a new regularity.
What to see
- The Jacobean red-brick façade, framed by turrets and gables.
- The long gallery with its adorned plaster ceiling.
- The library of Blickling, originally one of the richest in private hands.
- The memory of the Boleyns and Anne's supposed birth.
Did you know?
Legend has it that Anne Boleyn still haunts Blickling: each year, it is said, on the night of 19 May — the anniversary of her execution in 1536 — a coach driven by a headless coachman crosses the avenue, bearing the beheaded queen, her head on her lap. Nothing attests it, of course; but this legend says well how far the shadow of the queen born, perhaps, within these walls still hangs over Norfolk.
Practical information
Blickling Hall lies near Aylsham, in Norfolk, north-east of London. It is today a house in the care of the National Trust, open to the public with its park, gardens and library. Opening hours and days are liable to change; it is best to check them against the official sources before visiting.
Quiz
- Which family owned Blickling before the present house?
- The Boleyns
- The Cecils
- The Howards
- To which architectural style does Blickling Hall belong?
- The Jacobean style (early seventeenth century)
- Flamboyant Gothic
- Neoclassical
- Which queen is said, by tradition, to have been born at Blickling?
- Anne Boleyn
- Elizabeth I
- Jane Seymour