Hockwold Hall
Before 1066
Hockwold is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and it is said that there was a property on the site belonging to William De Warenne before passing it to Alveva, the wife of the Earl of Mercia.
Doomsday book
Domesday Book
Hockwold is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and it is said that there was a property on the site belonging to William De Warenne before passing it to Alveva, the wife of the Earl of Mercia.
Medieval Manor
The new house took the name of the manor which was called Poynings, after the family who had owned it for nearly 250 years before it passed to a cousin Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland. His son the 5th Earl inherited Poynings but died childless, and bequeathed his properties to Henry VIII, who sold Poynings to Thomas Tindale.
Poynings Barony
Poynings Barony
By 1323, the manor at Hockwold and several other properties in Norfolk were owned by Michael de Poynings. After the Battle of Crécy (1346), Michael was granted a knighthood and in 1348 he was summoned to Parliament to become the 1st Baron Poynings. Robert Poynings, 4th Baron, had three sons and by his second wife, a daughter, Eleanor. Eleanor married Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland.
Elizabeth Lady Poynings
Robert Lord Poynings, upon his death the Jury of Henry VI found him to have held this manor of Hockwold cum Wilton, and the advowson of the church of Hockwold, two messuages, 200 acres of land, 10 of meadow, and 100s. rent, of the manor of Castle-Acre and in 1464, Elizabeth Lady Poynings presented to the rectory, as lady of this manor. Elizabeth married Sir Robert Poynings in 1459, aged 29. Poynings was part in Cades Rebellion and had been a carver and sword bearer to Jack Cade. He had received a pardon although he had sufficient money and property to satisfy Agnes. Elizabeth recieved a dowry of 400 marks as part of her father’s will. Unfortunately Poynings was killed two years later at the second Battle of St. Albans while fighting for the Yorkists.
Sir Edward Poynings
In 1483 after the death of Edward IV, Edward (age 24) led an uprising in Kent against Richard III and had to flee the country, but returned in 1485 to be knighted and serve Henry VII in the Netherlands, France and Ireland. He was sent to Ireland as Lord Deputy in 1494-5 to establish “Poynings Law”, whereby Irish administration was made directly dependent on the English Crown and privy council. In 1497 he was presented to Hockwold church as Lord Warden of the Cinque-ports, and thereafter he was employed in negotiations with England’s allies on the continent. When he died in 1521, he had no surviving legitimate children, so Henry Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland was found to be cousin and heir.
The Percys
Henry Percy – 6th Earl of Northumberland
Henry Algernon Percy, 5th Earl of Northumberland (1478–1527), inherited the estate of his cousin, Sir Edward Poynings in 1521. His eldest son, Henry Percy, loved Anne Boleyn, but his father considered her ‘a mere knight’s daughter, and not an appropriate fit for his son and heir’. He married Lady Mary Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, but quickly became estranged from her, and since they had no children and his brothers had been implicated in the Pilgrimage of Grace (1535), he bequeathed his entire inheritance to the King. The 6th Earl died in 1537, and a nephew inherited the title, but the Hockwold properties came to the Crown, to be purchased by Sir Thomas Tindale.
Tudor House
Tudor House
Sir Thomas Tindale had purchased “Poynings Manor” shortly after the death of his father in 1539, to become the new family seat, and the ‘Tudor House’ was probably completed well before his death in 1583. It is E-shaped, brick with stone quoins and plinth chamfers, and a stone octagon tower at the rear that was the original staircase
The stone may have come from nearby Bromehill Priory, which was closed in 1528, with the contents and materials sold, with the proceeds going to Cardinal Wolsey’s proposed college at Ipswich.
Sir William Paston
Sir William Paston
William Paston, 1st baronet, (1528–1610) was the father of the first Earl of Yarmouth. He studied at Gonville Hall, Cambridge, He served as the Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk between 1565 and 1556 and received a knighthood in August 1578.
Sir Thomas Tindale
Sir Thomas Tindale or Tyndall (1505-1583) was the eldest of nine children born to Sir John Tindale (1486-1539), who in turn was heir to Sir William Tindale (died 1496) and his wife Mary, who inherited the Mundeford-Ingeldesthorp properties. Sir William, was also, through his maternal great-grandmother, declared heir to the Crown of Bohemia in 1501. He declined the offer to become King. Later on, Thomas’s son Humphrey, Dean of Ely, was also offered the crown and also declined.
Hevinghams at Hockwold
The Hockwold manors passed to William Heveningham on his father’s death in 1633. The house was occupied by his brother Colonel Arthur Heveningham, who married Jane, daughter of Sir Edmund Mundeford*. Their son, Sir Henry Heveningham MP, was born at Hockwold in 1651. Sir Henry wrote the poem ‘If music be the food of love’, based on a line in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and set to music by Henry Purcell in 1692 and 1693. Arthur Heveningham died in 1657 and has a memorial in St Peter, Hockwold.
Sir William Heveningham
Sir William Hevingham
High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1633 and Member of Parliament from 1640, and during the Civil War 1642-51. Commissioner of the court that in 1649 tried Charles I, but he was one of those who refused to sign the execution warrant. After the Restoration in 1660, he was found guilty of treason but successfully petitioned for mercy and was imprisoned in Windsor Castle in 1664 until his death in 1678, but his property was attainted.
The Kings Gift
Edward Proger MP
Groom of the Bedchamber. In 1661 Charles II gifted Hockwold to a group of courtiers, who sold the title to Sir John Crofts, 1st Baronet of Stow, son of Anthony Crofts, who was second son of Sir John Crofts of Saxham. Since Stow had been inherited by his cousin, William, it appears that Sir John intended Hockwold to be his new home. But he died sans issue in 1664, aged 29. By 1677, Sir John’s Executor, Edward Proger was leasing Hockwold to Sir Cyril Wyche , who purchased it in 1690 for £12,000 (£2.7m in today’s money).
Sir Cyril Wyche
Sir Cyril Wyche
Sir Cyril Wyche married to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Jermyn of Rushbrooke in 1663 and in 1664 their first son, Jermyn was baptised at Hockwold. This son did not survive, and their second son, also Jermyn, was born c1670. Sir Cyril had been a founder member of The Royal Society in 1661, and its President in 1683-4 and served on its council in the 1680s and 1690s, and was President of the Dublin Philosophical Society 1693. His wife Elizabeth died in 1678, and he married Susanna, Lady Perrott 1684, She died in 1690 and he married Mary Evelyn 1692. Sir Cyril Wyche was a Member of Parliament for Callington 1661-79, East Grinstead 1681, Saltash 1685-87, and Preston 1702-05. He was a Privy Councillor and Chief Secretary of Ireland in 1676–85 and again 1692–93, latterly also MP for Trinity College, Dublin. In 1693-95 he was appointed Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and a Lord Justice of Ireland. He remained an Irish Privy Councillor till his death in 1707.
Mary Wyche
Mary Evelyn (1648-1723) became the third wife of Sir Cyril Wyche in 1692 when she was already 44 years old and he was 60. She had been born at Wotton, Kent where her father George Evelyn created a renowned Italian garden in 1643-52. When George died in 1699, Wotton went to his brother, the famous gardener, diarist and Fellow of The Royal Society, John Evelyn (1620-1706). Perhaps some features of the Hockwold garden, particularly it’s layout, are due to the Evelyns.
Second Sir Cyril Wyche
After the death of Sir Cyril Wyche in 1707, ownership passed to his son Jermyn Wyche (c1670-1720), MP for Fowey. He left the property to his only son, also Cyril Wyche (b. 1707), High Sheriff of Norfolk in 1729, and also knighted. His initials appear on the stable block with the date 1757. On his death in 1780, the property then passed to his nephew Cyrill (sic) Clough, son of his sister Mary (d. 1758) and Robert Clough of Feltwell (d. 1777).
Edward Billingsley
Edward Billingsley is recorded as being at Hockwold Hall in 1786 and being there as High Sherriff of Norfolk in 1787, presumably as a tenet of Cyrill Clough. His will puts him still at Hockwold in 1814, well after 1805 when the property passed to Cyrill’s daughter Catherine.
Clough-Newcome
Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of Ireland
Cyrill Clough married Mary King at Feltwell in 1777, and had two sons, who predeceased him, and four daughters. On this death in 1805, his youngest daughter Catherine inherited the Hockwold property and she married Rev William Newcome in 1808. William Newcome was the son of the Archbishop of Armash and together Catherine and William had the wealth to acquire several newly enclosed lands in Hockwold and elsewhere.
Hockwold Riots
A crowd of almost 100 assembled in Hockwold, which incidentally was in the process of being enclosed, on Friday 17th May, “and did make Noise, Riot, Route, Tumult and Disturbance” for over six hours. They gathered early outside the house of the Reverend William Newcombe, where apparently, they were resisted by James Stark, one of the labourers who “did beat, bruise, wound and ill-treat him so that his life was greatly despaired of”, and then forced him to go with the crowd into the Vicar’s house. It is not clear whether Newcombe was robbed but later the crowd, led by Howers, Thomas Newton and another labourer named Wilton, went along and demanded beer from a Mrs. Grace Rolfe, who was forced to part with two quarts”.
Hockwold Hall
Three crescents (Newcome) charged with a fesse wavy between three leopard faces (Clough)
It seems that by the early 19th century, Poyning’s Manor became known as Hockwold Hall, and the western part of the Tudor house was remodelled with Georgian windows to the west and south. The escutcheon over the front door has the shield of Newcombe charged (overlain) with that of his wife, Clough, and thus dates from the period when the house was remodelled.