The road to Norfolk has improved considerably since I used to make the journey to and beyond Thetford in the early 1980s. Now one can be in north Norfolk in a couple of hours it is a much more plausible day trip. So a couple of weeks ago when the sun was shining we took our son to meet his ancestors at beautiful Heydon Hall, 24 miles west of Norwich, which is where – in the late 18th Century – the Lytton family got hitched to the Bulwer family and the name Bulwer Lytton has its origins.
The Bulwer family still lives in the old Elizabethan hall and the interior is not open to view, but its picturesque red brick façade is fine sight from the surrounding park, which visitors are welcome to stroll in. Access to the park is via the small village at the gates, which has no other through traffic so the tables of the Tea Rooms on a sunny day are spread out into the village lane. It is a very beautiful and wonderfully peaceful place and, I’m sure, not so very different today from when my great-great-great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Lytton went to live there from her family home at Knebworth – well before there was dual carriageway on the A11.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
