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Helmingham and the Tollemache family have been together for many hundreds of years. The Hall and the old oak trees that you see today have seen much of the history of England pass before them, and many generations of this family.

The Tollemache family has lived in Suffolk from shortly after the Norman Conquest to the present day. Their home for the first 400 years was at Bentley, near lpswich, and although there was a proud boast, Before the Normans into England came, Bentley was my seat and Tollemache my name, it seems now certain that the family came over from Avranches on the Normandy coast. Their name was spelt Talemache, meaning ‘purse bearer’, and it is recorded that Hugh Tollemache was Purse Bearer to Henry 1.

They remained at Bentley as squires and knights throughout the turbulent years of those early centuries, fighting for both Henry II against the Welsh and Edward I against the Scots and quite often against their neighbours to retain their lands, Two Tollemache knights from Bentley fought at the Battle of Crécy against the French in 1346.

However, in 1487, John Tollemache married Elizabeth Joyce, the heiress of Helmingham, and his son Lionel also married a Joyce. further cementing the union, and so they moved to Helmingham where the Joyce family home of Creke Hall stood. John Tollemache and his wife proceeded to pull this down and build Helmingham, completed in 1510, as it stands today. surrounded by its deep moat, serene gardens and deer park.

It must have been some years after my family moved to Helmingham that they started work on the gardens, but old maps and drawings show that the original


shape of the main walled garden predates the house by many years; it was most probably of Saxon origin and constructed to protect stock from marauders. There was a wooden palisade to protect the garden from the deer until the present garden wall was built in 1745.
There are two rose gardens at Helmingham, both formal, but very different in character. The main garden is on the west side of the house, which is described first in the Tour of the Gardens. The second garden, to the east side of the house, was laid out in 1982. The intention was to create something that was close to the kind of garden the family might have had in Tudor times, but one that would include old, scented shrub roses. The garden is laid out in a pattern combining the square, the circle and the cross in three decorative themes. Some years later, it looks as if it must have always been there.

 

 
 
 
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