Lords of the manor of Hardwick, the Cullum family lived at Hardwick House for almost three centuries, from 1656 until the 1920s, producing a line of baronets who were physicians, botanists, antiquarians, authors, horticulturalists, ministers and two of whom served as Bath King of Arms for the Order of the Bath for nearly 60 years. Ultimately, the Cullum family estate was sold during the Depression of the 1920s when the last family member died without direct heir, and it was later dismantled for building materials in 1926-1927.[2]
Hardwick House was built on what were formerly the medieval grazing lands of St Edmundsbury Abbey, which were sold during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Eventually the properties fell to Sir Robert Drury of nearby Hawstead Place, a former moated manor now demolished. The Drury family lived at Hawstead for 150 years before Sir Robert – who had removed his paintings and furniture to his newly built Hardwick House in 1610 – died in 1615 and the eldest line of the Drury family became extinct. The only standing remains of Hawstead are the brick gate pillars at the entrance to the manor and some other brickwork and the moat: however the painted emblematic panels of the last Lady Drury's private oratory or chamber of meditation were transferred to Hardwick,[3] and are now kept at Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich.[4]Queen Elizabeth I spent one night at Hawstead Place in 1578, when she was said to have knighted the owner, Sir William Drury, after he restored to her the silver-handled fan she had dropped into the moat at Hawstead Place.[5] The Hawstead and Hardwick Estates were sold by the heirs of Robert Drury in 1656 to Sir Thomas Cullum, first Cullum Baronet who had grown rich as a London draper and been Sheriff of London in 1646.[6]
Interior of Elizabethan Hardwick House, showing staircase. Circa 1900
Hardwick House, standing one and a half miles south of Bury, was a Jacobean house of 1612 thought to have incorporated the medieval Abbey Lodge and featured a bold portico entrance with enormous carved oak doors and the Drury coat of arms carved above the doorway.[7] The House was embroidered over the centuries by the Cullums who added gables, towers, ornate cut flint Tolkiensian cottage confections, gazebos, fountains, statuary and planting.
Hardwick eventually was expanded to include seven principal bedrooms, nine bachelors rooms and secondary bedrooms, twelve servants' bedrooms and three bathrooms.[8] With its bibliophile owners, the home had several libraries. (Most of the library collection, the 'Cullum Collection', was later donated to the Bury St Edmunds Record Office, where it remains.) Hardwick House also had an extensive collection of portraits, one of which was of Sir Thomas Gargrave, a once-powerful Yorkshire knight related to Sir Thomas Gery Cullum's wife's family.[9] The Cullum family portraits were bequeathed to the Borough of St Edmundsbury in 1921 by the last surviving member of the Cullum family.[10]
The extensive grounds of Hardwick House were largely the creation of Sir Dudley Cullum, owner of the manor between 1680 and 1720, a keen horticulturalist and the only member of the Cullum family to be an MP– he served as a Whig for Suffolk from 1702–05. The house had a 2-acre (8,100m2) kitchen garden and several other gardens: an Italian garden with rosery and flowerbeds; a lime and sycamore tree-lined avenue; and a large 'pleasure grounds', with gazebos, and planted with exotic trees and shrubs. The kitchen garden also had pear, peach, plum, apple, cherry, and fig trees. The so-called 'Winter Garden,' also created by Sir Dudley, had a range of glass greenhouses for his horticultural pursuits, as well as a conservatory and orangery, palm house, peach house and a vinery.[11]
Group portrait at Hardwick House, 1876
The gardens at Hardwick were created, in part, by the English horticulturalist and gardener John Evelyn, who consulted on them with his friend Dudley Cullum. In a letter to Evelyn of 1694, Cullum expressed his delight at the effectiveness of the stove which heated his greenhouses.[12]
The Hardwick Estate eventually came to embrace a small village of properties, including adjoining farms and cottages built by the Cullum baronets on the initial holding. A smaller gardeners cottage adjacent to walled garden of Hardwick House was eventually expanded to be a full-scale home in its own right (known as Hardwick Manor from 1926).[13] Hardwick became so elaborate that it came to include a Venetian indoor riding school, also being the centre of a busy social scene, with fox hunting parties often gathering on the Cullum estate.[14]
Hardwick Manor House, one of many homes on the estate of now-demolished Hardwick House
Suffolk MPThomas Milner Gibson, who lived at Theberton House, Suffolk, married Arethusa Susannah, the daughter of Rev Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, 8th and last Baronet and High Sheriff of Suffolk.[15] Their son, the last of the senior line of the Cullums, was the well-known antiquarian and author George Gery Milner-Gibson-Cullum (1857–1921), F.S.A.[16] The house was ultimately dismantled following his death in 1921, the estate having been passed to the Crown and sold under the Intestates Estates Act 1884.
The grounds and site of the formal gardens and statuary today constitute Hardwick Heath (55 acres (220,000m2) of the former Cullum estate turned into public parkland), Bury St Edmunds District Scouts Hardwick Heath Campsite, the West Suffolk Hospital, the grounds of Hardwick Manor and housing developments. The site of Hardwick House itself is a wood bordering some original cedar and yew trees.[17]
Many of the Drury family, as well as the Cullums, are buried at All Saints' Church in Hawstead, which has many remarkable memorials.
Bury St Edmunds, commonly referred to locally as Bury, is a historic market and cathedral town and civil parish in Suffolk, England. The town is best known for Bury St Edmunds Abbey and St Edmundsbury Cathedral. Bury is the seat of the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich of the Church of England, with the episcopal see at St Edmundsbury Cathedral.
Thomas Milner Gibson PC was a British politician.
Sir Robert Drury (1456–1536) was an English knight, Lord of the Manor of Hawstead, Suffolk, and Knight of the Body to Kings Henry VII and Henry VIII. As a politician he was Knight of the Shire for Suffolk, Speaker of the House of Commons, and Privy Councillor. He was also a barrister-at-law. His London townhouse was on the site of today's Drury Lane.
Hawstead is a small village and civil parish in the West Suffolk district of Suffolk in eastern England. It is located 5 kilometres (3 mi) south of Bury St. Edmunds between the B1066 and A134 roads, in a fork formed by the River Lark and a small tributary.
Pakenham is a village and civil parish in the West Suffolk district of Suffolk in eastern England. Its name can be linked to Anglo-Saxon roots, Pacca being the founder of a settlement on the hill surrounding Pakenham church. The village describes itself as the "Village of Two Mills", as it has a water mill which claims to be the only working example in the county. The Pakenham windmill no longer works.
Sir Clement Higham MP JP PC of Barrow, Suffolk, was an English lawyer and politician, a Speaker of the House of Commons in 1554, and Chief Baron of the Exchequer in 1558–1559. A loyal Roman Catholic, he held various offices and commissions under Queen Mary, and was knighted in 1555 by King Philip, but withdrew from politics after the succession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558.
Thomas Martin, known as "Honest Tom Martin of Palgrave", was an antiquarian and lawyer.
Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, 7th Baronet was a medical doctor educated at London Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge, and who later practised surgery at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, where he served as an alderman and Deputy Lieutenant for Suffolk.
Elizabeth Stafford, also known as Dame Elizabeth Drury and – in the years prior to her death in 1599 – Dame (Lady) Elizabeth Scott, was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth I. She and her first husband, Sir William Drury, entertained Queen Elizabeth I at Hawstead in 1578.
This is a list of Sheriffs and High Sheriffs of Suffolk.
Sir Nicholas Bacon, 1st Baronet, of Redgrave, Suffolk, English Member of Parliament. In 1611 he became the first man to be made a baronet. Bacon would serve on many commissions. The Privy Council constantly called upon him to conduct inquiries. He was a puritan leader in Suffolk. The power and prestige of the puritan ministries in many areas of the country owed their power to Bacon. Sir Nicholas Bacon was considered a good Christian by his contemporaries. Especially his chaplain, Robert Allen. Robert Allen stated that Sir Bacon's wife was dedicated to "God's holy religion and worship by every good and Christian means in the sight of men."
The Cullum baronetcy, of Hastede in Suffolk, was created in the Baronetage of England on 18 June 1660 for Thomas Cullum. It became extinct on the death of the eighth Baronet, 26 January 1855. The family estate was Hardwick House, Suffolk.
Sir Dudley Cullum, 3rd Baronet was an English Whig Member of Parliament and horticultural author.
Lady Drury's Closet is a series of painted wooden panels of early 17th-century date, currently installed in the room over the porch of Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich, Suffolk, England.
Levett Hanson (1754–1814), who styled himself as 'Sir' Levett Hanson, was an English-born author and courtier who was active at a number of European courts.
Sir John Cullum, 6th Baronet was an English clergyman and antiquary.
Sir Richard Gipps of Great Whelnetham, Suffolk, was Master of the Revels at Gray's Inn and a historian of the county of Suffolk. His portrait painted by John Closterman, was engraved in mezzotint by John Smith. Care should be taken to distinguish him from Sir Richard Gipps of Horningsheth, a contemporary, neighbour, and distant relative, who was knighted by Charles II at Saxham, Suffolk, on 20 October 1676.
Rushbrooke Hall was a British stately home in Rushbrooke, Suffolk. For several hundred years it was the family seat of the Jermyn family. It was demolished in 1961.
Susannah Arethusa Gibson was an English Liberal activist and feminist of the 19th century, who variously supported Giuseppe Mazzini and the unification of Italy, mesmerism and spiritualism, and opposed the Roman Catholic Church until joining it in later life. She was married to Thomas Milner Gibson, a leading campaigner for free trade.
Anne Bacon Drury (1572–1624) was an English literary patron. Her painted closet survives as a very rare example of Jacobean interior decoration.
↑ Cullum, Sir J., History and Antiquities of Hawstead and Hardwicke (1813).
↑ D.C. Mantz, S.E. Gardner and E.M. Ramsden, 'The benefit of an image without the offence', in Westerwell, B. (Ed.), Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem (Symbola et Emblemata Vol. VIII) (Brill, Leiden, New York & Cologne 1997), 253-276, esp. pp 266-272 and figs 1-4.
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