The magnificent family home of Hal and Sue Baggett, Leaven's Hall.
I've been in and out of many stately homes in the UK,
but I don't think I've ever been into such a family home as this one.
It really is a family home.
Hal and Susie Baggett live here, and the house is called Leaven's Hall,
and the funny thing is, it's only a few miles away from where I live
and I've never been round here.
It is a magnificent place with gardens that go stretching back hundreds of years,
and where we're standing now is the Peel Tower.
This is the oldest part of the building.
So let's go in and meet Susie, who's going to give us a tour around Leaven's Hall.
Susie, could you tell me a little bit about the history of Leaven's Hall?
Yes, of course.
It starts from a very early 12th century recording of the enclosure of the land here,
and we have the original deed that actually shows that, which is very interesting.
It's not known whether there was a house here at that time,
but then, of course, there was a Peel Tower built here,
a defensive tower built against the raiding, of course,
the border raiding that was going on at that time,
and probably where this hall is, there was a primitive form of hall, medieval hall.
And then, of course, the house passed through,
that was the Deredman family at that time,
and it was then sold to a Bellingham,
and James Bellingham was the first Bellingham to live here,
and he made money out of the disillusion of the monasteries,
and built the Elizabethan house that we're sitting in now.
So he enclosed the Peel Tower, the remains of the medieval Peel Tower,
within the Elizabethan house.
So you can still see in the cellars remains of the medieval structure,
and anyone who knows the house from behind the scenes,
working on the house, on the building of the house,
will come across immensely thick walls in that end of the house.
Then you have your Elizabethan house,
and that stayed the same while the Bellinghams were here.
And then the last Bellingham, who was the great-grandson of James,
Alan Bellingham, was a bit of a no-good, fell off hard times.
Well, he's a great gambler, evidently, and he had to sell the estate,
so he sold it to his cousin, James Graham.
And Graham added, I mean, he did many, many things.
He was a wonderful man.
He was privy purse to King James II.
He was very prominent in the court in London at the time,
both Charles II's court and James II.
And he added the two wings onto the house,
the south wing and the other wing that runs the other way,
which weren't actually joined at that time for kitchens, launderies,
storerooms, all that sort of thing, and more bedrooms.
And also the brew house at the end,
where they brewed the famous Morocco ale,
which we'll talk about later, I think, probably as we go round.
Anyway, so James Graham stayed here,
and then he left the house to his daughter,
who was his only remaining child,
because his other children had died.
And she then inherited,
although she was the countess of Suffolk,
so she had many other houses and didn't come to Leavens very much.
There was a fascinating correspondence between her
and the agent here at the time,
so we know a lot about the house at that time.
And then she left it to her daughter and granddaughter,
and it went through the female line for about three generations.
And that's why the garden was really preserved,
because they loved it, they didn't have the means,
the financial means to alter it,
so it didn't become fashionable, so to speak.
And so we have the lovely early garden that we have nowadays,
and we love them, really.
