FORESTRY 



year long, besides other curiosities.' 1 There have been about ten acres planted within recent years, 

 partly for game purposes, but chiefly for the protection of exposed arable land. 



Orwell Park (Mr. E. G. Pretyman), in Nacton parish, incloses 150 acres, and is stocked with 

 about 1 50 fallow deer. The park slopes down to the Orwell, which is here tidal ; it contains 

 much broken bracken-covered ground, and some fine oaks. The tree planting on this estate has 

 been done chiefly on the light lands which have been found unprofitable to farm. About 160 acres 

 have been covered in recent years, and these plantations are used as cover for game. This park 

 was enclosed by Lord Orwell about 1750. 



Redgrave Park (Mr. George Holt Wilson) is a well-wooded deer park of about 300 acres, 

 with a herd of 80 fallow deer; it assumed its present proportions in 1770. There has been no 

 recent planting on the estate, except to replace. This park is marked on Saxton's survey 

 of 1575. 



Polstead Park (Mr. Edmund Buckley Cooke) has an acreage of 84 acres, and a herd of about 

 70 fallow deer ; it is well wooded with oak, ash, horse-chestnut, and elm. Near the church is a 

 great ancient tree known as the 'gospel oak ' ; the decayed trunk has a girth of 32 ft. at 5 ft. from 

 the ground ; there is also an elm with a girth of 2 1 ft. 



Campsey Ash Park (Hon. William Lowther) has an area of 87 acres and is stocked with 

 about 100 fallow deer. The park is well studded with trees, and in front of the house are some 

 exceptionally large cedar trees, and a double avenue of limes. There has been no considerable 

 planting on this estate of late years. The old coverts have been replanted when necessary, after the 

 underwood has been cut. Six small plantations, each of about an acre, have been planted with 

 Scotch and spruce firs and larch, and a few hard wood trees, chiefly for the purpose of shelter in the 

 most exposed parts of the estate, which is open to the east coast. 



In addition to the deer parks of the county, Suffolk still possesses an unusual number of parks 

 untenanted by deer, all of which are fairly well timbered or surrounded by plantations, whilst several 

 are of great beauty and extent, and possessed of fine old forest trees. 2 The historic parks of Henham 

 and Heveningham have already been named, and besides these there are eleven which cover an area 

 of 300 or more acres, and which demand a word or two of special mention. 



Brandon Park (Mr. Almeric Hugh Paget) lies about a mile webt of the town of Brandon, in 

 the north-west of the county. The area of the property known by this name is 2,626 acres, and it 

 contains between four and five hundred acres of woodland scattered in different parts. In the last 

 four years a great deal of planting has been done, to form new coverts for game, as well as for land- 

 scape effects. The whole of the woodland has been long neglected, but is now being gradually taken 

 in hand and renovated. It is found in this neighbourhood that so far as the success of a plantation 

 is concerned it pays over and over again to double-trench the land before planting. There are 

 thousands of larch on the Brandon Park property that should have been felled long ago ; about 

 seventy per cent, of them are hollow. 



Euston Park (duke of Grafton) to the south-east of Thetford, has the noble area of 1,262 acres ; 

 it contains much splendid timber. There are between 1,300 and 1,400 acres of woodland on the 

 estate, which is about a tenth part of the whole property. There has not been much planting of 

 late years, only two or three acres annually, consisting principally of ornamental clumps and shelter 

 belts. In 1671 Evelyn visited Lord Arlington at his 'palace of Euston.' ' Here my lord,' says the 

 diarist, 'was pleased to advise with me about ordering his plantations of firs, elms, limes, &c., up 

 his park, and in all other places and avenues. I persuaded him to bring his park so near as to com- 

 prehend his house within it ; which he resolved upon, it being now near a mile to it.' 3 In August 

 1677, Evelyn was again at Euston and enters: ' 29th We hunted in the park, and killed a very 

 fat buck. 3 1st I went a hawking !' 4 In the following month he refers to ' four rows of ash trees a 

 mile in length which reach to the park pale, which is nine miles in compass, and the best for riding 

 and meeting the game that I ever saw. There were now of red and fallow deer almost a thousand, 

 with good covert, but the soil barren and flying sand, in which nothing will grow kindly. The 

 tufts of fir and much of the other wood were planted by my direction some years before.'' The 

 deer were done away with by the fifth duke of Grafton about the middle of the last century. 



Culford Park (Earl Cadogan), four miles north-west of Bury St. Edmunds, consistsof 550 acres; 

 it is well wooded and extends to the river Lark. During the past seven or eight years, new planta- 

 tions have been made on the estate at the rate of about 25 or 30 acres per annum. Besides the new 

 planting, the old woods are being improved. The new plantations have been made with a view to 



1 Fuller, Worthies (ed. l66z), ii, 53. 



* The short details relative to these parks are partly from the fragmentary histories of Gage and Suckling, 

 and partly from personal observations ; but we are chiefly here also indebted to the courtesy of owners and 

 their agents. 



3 Evelyn, Diary and Correspondence (ed. 1850), ii, 64. 



4 Ibid. no. 'Ibid. 113. 



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