Flixton Hall

The first Flixton Hall, as a stately home, was built on the site of the old manor house by John Tasburgh about 1615. It was destroyed by fire in 1846, as the following account in the London Illustrated News describes. It then belonged to the Adair family.

The engraving of the old Tasburgh Hall below was made from sketches taken a few years before the addition of a new wing.

DEC. 19, 1846. THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS,

DESTRUCTION OF FLIXTON HALL BY FIRE.

We regret to record the entire destruction of the fine old " ancestral home," situate at a short distance from Bungay, in Suffolk. The details of the catastrophe are as follow:

At about two o'clock on Sunday morning, the ringing of the church bells and to the cry of " Fire! " aroused the inhabitants of Bungay, and, upon the locality being ascertained, one of the town engines and the powerful one of the silk mills at Ditchingham, were, after a short delay in procuring horses, despatched, followed by hundreds of persons, who were quickly joined at the scene of the fire by an engine from Harleston; but so rapid had been the progress of the flames, and so entirely had they obtained the ascendancy, that comparatively nothing could be saved; and the house, with its furniture (some of which was very costly),its pictures, fine old china, &c., fell a sacrifice to the flames. The fire was not subdued till late on Sunday evening.

Another account states :-Late on Saturday night a dreadful fire broke out at Flixton-Hall, the residence of Sir Robert Shafto Adair. It appears that about twelve o'clock at night, a boy was passing along the road adjoining the parks when his attention was called to a great body of flame issuing from the window, of the Hall. He immediately gave an alarm, and aroused the servants. Shortly afterwards, the engines arrived and began to play on the burning pile, but not to much effect, as the fire had got such a hold as to defy all their efforts to stop it. The mansion was destroyed, with all its valuable and ancient pictures (one worth 1,000 guineas), and costly furniture. Nothing was saved from the flames but a fewer bolsters and pillows. The family were absent, and there were only six domestics in the house at the time.

A messenger was despatched to Norwich, in order to communicate, per telegraph, the intelligence to Sir Shafto Adair, In London; and, in the evening, Mr. A. S. Adair, the elder son, arrived.

The bare walls are standing, the whole being completely gutted. The Hall has been under extensive repair the last half-year, and a great number of hands have been employed: many of their tools were consumed. The loss cannot at present be estimated, but it is thought that £40,000 will not cover the damage.

Flixton is stated to have been built about the year 1615, and continued to be the residence of the ancient family of Tasborough, from the site of its erection to the middle of the present century, when it was purchased by the late William Adair, father of the present owner, created a Baronet in 1838. The building has been attributed to Inigo Jones; but it has the earlier characteristics of shafts, like the ornamented chimneys of the Elizabethan style, at the bayed projections of the wings and centre. The whole edifice had a vast number of windows, all of them pedimented. The doorway is arched, and flanked by coupled columns, supporting a pediment. The pillars are placed on pedestals (ornamented with lozenges), elevated on the base. The building is battlemented; and the corners of the wings have buttresses, rising similar to chimney-shafts. The whole appearance is, or rather was, noble; and the building was a good specimen of the mixed style prevalent in the seventeenth century, but not a highly enriched one, not so highly, at least, as many of the old halls to be met with in Suffolk and Norfolk. We have engraved the principal or northern front.

Of the artistical treasures of the mansion we find the following account in Raw's Pocket-book, of some years since:

" In the hall are busts of the Right Hon. C. J. Fox, Lord Keppel, and General Wolfe. In the staircase, above the door entering the saloon, is a fine bust of Inigo Jones, who built the house. The saloon contains thirty-four paintings, by various masters, among which are the following :-A Madonna and Child ; Saint Peter and the Angel ; Fruit and Flowers, by Van Os; Saint Mark's, at Venice, by Cannletti; Landscapes, by Tillemans; Sea Pieces, by Vandervelde, &c. The library contains a choice collection of books ; a portrait of W.J. Adair, Esq., with his groom and two horses; a portrait of the Duke of Bolton's famous horse Sweepstakes: both this and the saloon are excellent rooms. In an adjoining bedroom is a portrait of General Huss, of Elling House ; a Turkish Lady; a Battle Piece; Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, &c., all very finely painted. In the other bed-rooms are the following paintings :-St. John the Baptist's head ; St. Agnes ; Mark Anthony and Cleopatra; a Sleeping Venus; Lucretia, &c. In the diningroom is a portrait of the present proprietor of this mansion, whose pleasant countenance confirms the public report of his politeness and urbanity. In the drawing-room are judiciously collected together the portraits of the late Duke of Richmond, his father, his mother, and sister, by Sir Joshua Reynolds; the late Duke of Cumberland; Sir Charles Saunders, by Sir Joshua Reynolds; Lord Anson, Keppel, Lord Albemarle, General Hughson, Lord George Lennox, General Napier, &c."

Sir Hugh Adair rebuilt the Hall in 1888-1892.

Front staircase and entrance to the Great Hall; early 20th century.

Great Hall seen from foot of the entrance staircase taken by Sir Frederick Adair circa 1907

The new hall was set in a well wooded park with open gardens as the following pictures show.

Flixton Hall and South East Avenue (1944) taken by an American serviceman at the U.S. Flixton 446th Bomb Group.

North East view of Flixton Hall and Park (1944) taken by an American serviceman at the U.S. Flixton 446th Bomb Group

American airmen at Flixon during the 2nd World War

The last Adair to own Flixton Hall was Major General, Sir Allan Shafto Adair, 6th Bt. Death duties forced the sale of the house, its contents and 250 acres surrounding it. After disposing of the contents in 1880 lots, such as a library of about 7,000 books, it was purchased by Mr. R.G. Lawrence in 1950. He dismantled it almost to ground level, salvaging valuable materials such as the fine interior woodwork, windows, stonework and brickwork.

See An Elegy for Flixton Hall on Utube

The Ownership of Flixton Hall in the Adair Family 1753-1950

1- William Adair, 1753-1783, to his nephew.

2- Alexander Adair, 1783-1834, to his cousin.

3- William "Hugh" Adair, 1834-1844, to his son.

4- Sir Robert Shafto Adair, 1st Bt. 1844-1869, to his son.

5- Baron Waveney, Sir Robert Alexander Shafto Adair, 2nd Bt., 1869-1886, to his brother.

6- Sir Hugh Edward Adair, 3rd Bt. 1886-1902, to his son.

7- Sir Frederick Edward Shafto Adair, 4th Bt. 1902-1915, to his brother.

8- Sir Robert Shafto Adair, 5th Bt. 1915-1949, to his son.

9- Maj. Gen. Sir Allan Shafto Adair, 6th Bt. 1949-1950 (died 1988).

PostScript

The last picture above is a snapshot was taken by one of a group of off-duty American airmen stationed at an airfield constructed in the village of Flixton at the outbreak of World War 2. They are posed in the deer park against a northern portion of the garden wall surrounding Flixton Hall. In this position they are situated at one of the many social boundaries of the village, which gave everyone living in Flixton at that time, their human identity. Until the coming of the military, the population of Flixton, since records began, had remained stable at around 100 individuals. The operation of the airfield increased its populace about thirty-fold. The base was a temporary addition, which emptied after the War when the village returned to its pre-war size. It was not until the 1960s that plans were imposed by the local authority to deliberately increase the housing stock to make space for incomers arising from an increase in the UK population.

Sand and gravel to build the airfield was excavated from valley pastoral lands and this industrial activity continues to this day. The current operations and the old abandoned flooded workings have created a new barren and derelict landscape of sand, gravel, flints and water along the northern boundary of the village with the River Waveney. Attempts are being made to beautify this legacy of wartime expediency through planting hedgerows. These boundary features delineate a new space within the village but from which people are excluded. Although the airfield was vacated in 1956 the concrete runways and military infrastructure remained and attracted some new commercial investment and activities with jobs which employ people who live outside the village.

The Second World War was therefore a turning point in compartmentation of the village. Before the upheaval brought by the airfield. Flixton as a place was rooted and bounded by physical features of hill and water. It had a fixed set of economic and social characteristics that had equilibrated with the fortunes of the dominant landowning family, the Adairs. As a third space its internal social skeleton was visible in the footpaths, roads, ponds, moats, woods, field boundaries, gates, farmsteads, and houses, all interwoven with the continuous metal fence of its large deer park. The latter was a statement of the Adair’s economic and political power, which had lasted for over three hundred years. During the Adair’s time and well before, Flixton’s social hierarchy was a steady state; a dynamic equilibrium where families came and went but the village was in thrall to a top-weighted manorial system. At first the peak was represented by St Felix and his ecclesiastical mission to Christianise the pagan Angles, then there was the prioress of the local Augustinian nunnery. The Tasburgh family acquired their power base by taking over the rights, privileges and properties of the nuns.

In this long run of historicality the Adairs were the last to assume overlordship of the village. Somewhere along this time line of sociality the common rights of the villagers were extinguished and tenant farms created, so shifting the third space duality of ‘observable’ to ‘hidden’, as the affairs of the village retreated into numerous spaces of private property. This process was accelerated after the War by the breakup of the Adair’s vast estate to pay inheritance tax. The neglected woods are currently the assets of distant bankers and the old deer pasture is a grass monoculture supporting an intensive dairy unit. Mechanisation of farming removed communal figures from the fields and the church lost its role as a social focus. Now the parkland, which was one huge no-go area for the villagers, has been fragmented into numerous private places as barns and their outbuildings have been converted into middle-class homes. Society has become steadily more privatised with cars, computers, and shopping centres, so extinguishing the public component of village life.

Flixton Hall has a long history as a complex space given ideological meaning by male dominance in rural architectural form-making. Since the 1950s it has been a forlorn ruin awaiting redevelopment. Like all ruins, the few remains of carved stone, cracked floor tiles and cow-grazed curves of the ornamental garden are redolent of the dualities of past and present, growth and decay, myth and history. They evoke deep emotional, philosophical, and literary responses against which modernity can be measured. In this respect, the Hall’s monumentality is key to Flixton as a third space because it immediately affects our notions of place, of self and the need to ensure ruins are kept 'alive'. Flixton Hall in the 18th century was at the forefront of expressing the English country house concept of ‘the picturesque’. Its ruination reminds us that reason kills everything, that place and space are both social constructs which are culturally mediated and intermeshed. The exclusion of ‘felt life’, by which we evaluate the spirit of place, strips away mystery, religion and even art. Nowhere is this more evident that in one of Flixton’s latest social constructs, its aviation museum. This is a thriving enterprise with free entry, supported by volunteers who come regularly from far and wide. The annual visitor numbers are in the tens of thousands. It is both a technical history of aviation and a memorial to those who flew the bombing missions from East Anglia’s military bases in World War 2. To understand Flixton’s symbolic role in this conflict one has to walk from the museum in the valley to a flat treeless hilltop above the village; to a luminal island of the spirit where the old runways are lost to view each year in acres of vigorous crops of cereals. Walking allows new spaces to be discovered, which are physical, in this case a concrete runway, and which are also epistemological, an understanding of the runway and the personal meaning it holds. A narrative with transcendental overtones emerges that might not have been uncovered in a stationary investigation. It is from the undistinguished hill top, in the space of three years, that hundreds of men took to the air with their deadly cargoes never to return. This spot becomes a third space and is yet another reminder that we unthinkingly accept the premise that because of globalisation, all places are becoming the same, rather than assuming that all places are different