page_title: Hoveton Hall
section_title: Christabell Burroughes
hierarchical_section_title: Hoveton Hall / Christabell Burroughes
caption_attribution_description: English: Tithe Map of Hoveton Hall, 1840
context_page_description: Hoveton Hall, Hoveton in Norfolk is an historic house of significance on the English Heritage Register. It is a well-preserved Regency house of gault brick with a slate roof and was built between 1809 and 1812 by Humphry Repton, the well-known architect and landscape designer. Today it is part of an estate of 120 acres of gardens and parkland and 450 acres of arable land as well as picturesque woodland. The gardens are open to the public during part of the year and there are facilities available for accommodation and special events particularly weddings.
context_section_description: The originator of Hoveton Hall was Christabell Burroughes who commissioned Humphry Repton to construct the mansion in 1809.
  Christabell was born in 1764. Her father was Henry Negus (1734-1807) a solicitor who worked in Bungay, Suffolk but who also owned Hoveton Hall. The Negus family had for a long time been wealthy landowners in the Hoveton area.
  In 1789 Christabell married James Burkin Burroughes who had inherited Burlingham Hall in Norfolk (now demolished). The couple lived at Burlingham Hall for some time but unfortunately in 1803 at the age of only 43 James died leaving Christabell to care for seven sons and one daughter. 
  She remained at the Hall for several years. In 1807 her father Henry Negus died and as she was his sole heir she became owner of Hoveton Hall with its existing old manor house. Possibly because her eldest son Henry Negus Burroughes was to turn 21 in 1812 and therefore inherit Burlingham Hall, she decided to build her own house at Hoveton. By 1812 the new house was complete and she moved there with her younger children. She suffered a severe loss three years later when two of her sons James and Edward who had been sent to Cambridge University died there within a week of each other because of an outbreak of an infectious fever.
  Christabell was a very good gardener and was mentioned frequently in the gardening magazines of the time. She had the walled garden constructed early as it is shown in the Enclosure Map of 1828. In 1841 James Grigor, a botanist visited Hoveton Hall and gave a very favourable account of the garden. Some of the extracts are as follows.
  "Though evening was darkening around us when we visited this place, we had sufficient time to perceive that it ranks deservedly high as a seat of general excellence…Whilst the flower-garden here is of such perfect character, the scenes of the shrubbery and pleasure-ground are of an equally interesting description. The shrubbery is a well-managed piece of work, successfully blended with the lawn of the pleasure-ground, and though modern, already contributing to the general beauty of the place. The most elegant part of the picture lies betwixt the hall and the kitchen-garden, a locality which art has rendered very ornamental, and where the shrubs are assuming a high degree of beauty. The whole place is so judiciously laid out, that we hazard the opinion that it has been done by someone who has become eminent in his profession.
  The trees here form a grand sight. They are chiefly of the oak tribe, and at the south-west side of the mansion they rise in the form of an avenue. The elegant manner in which this seat is kept, combined with the extensive and well-assorted collection of flowers and shrubs which it contains, merits our highest praise."
  In 1843 Christabell died and her eldest son Henry Negus Burroughes inherited Hoveton Hall.
caption: Map of Hoveton Hall in 1840
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