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The Park encloses 400 acres
and has large herds of both red and fallow deer. Every
year the stags grow antlers which they shed in the spring
and, as they mature, the antlers grow to huge proportions.
The deer have been in the Park for many centuries -
the earliest mention of them is in 1660. In the archives
there are reports of the Mound being used by the Helmingham
Volunteers to practise their musketry during the Napoleonic
Wars, but the Monument itself was constructed in about
1860, from the bricks of an ornamental seventeenth-century
walled arboretum on the site, which had fallen into
disrepair.
John Constable,
whose brother was steward of the Tollemache woodlands,
lived for some time at Helmingham Rectory, and painted
a number of versions of A Dell in Helmingham Park. The
oak tree in that picture, with its singular curved trunk,
still stands. Some of the famous Helmingham oaks in
the Park are estimated to be up to 900 years old, and
many have immense girths, but the splendid oak avenue
leading up the front drive was planted about 1680. This
avenue and many trees in the Park suffered terribly
in the great storm of 1987; a large replanting scheme
is being carried out so that future generations will
see little change.
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